So the day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters.  The old schoolmaster in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the “Sirventes de Bertrand de Born.”  The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again.  Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,—­pondering gravely (being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the “Gazette”; wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon his political opponents, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth.  Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche’s church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over.  The New Testament was,—­well,—­hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour.  I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the High-Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium, were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther’s time.  One thing, though, about Joel:  while he was joining in Mr. Clinche’s prayer for the “wiping out” of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side.  Let us hope, that, even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity.

Margaret, through the heat and stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once.  It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name.  The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it.  Once, however, another sound came between,—­a slow, quiet tread, passing through the long wooden corridor,—­so firm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of a clock.  She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it came slowly nearer, up to the door without,—­passed it, going down the echoing plank walk.  The girl sat quietly, looking out at the dead brick wall.  The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life.  Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door.