Mrs. Trent rolled up her knitting in a napkin, picked a few stray bits of yarn from her black dress, and stepped to the window.  She looked out across the valley toward the Cleft to see if perchance the clouds would open enough to permit her a view of the Peak.  Not once, but many times that day had she arisen from her work to search for a glimpse of the mountain, but every time she had failed.

“No, it’s hidden, still hidden,” she murmured half aloud.  “It is hard to be shut up here with my thoughts,—­with such thoughts.  I wish the clouds would lift and let me see the Peak.  Then I am sure that things would not seem so dark.  If I could only get one glimpse, I would feel almost, yes, almost as though Doctor McMurray had been here and had told me he was sorry.”

She stood looking out the window for a time, but the clouds only gathered more heavily in the Cleft and the Peak remained shrouded in the mist.  At last she turned wearily back toward her chair, and was about to resume her knitting when her ear caught the sound of wheels pausing before the house.  She hastened across the room toward the door and threw it open with a gesture of fear, as though she had been anticipating the coming of unwelcome visitors and now had reason to suppose that they had arrived.  The tremor of suspense, however, quickly passed, for she saw outside no less a person than Doctor McMurray himself.

“Doctor,” she called, “put your horse in the barn and come in.  It does my heart good to see you.”

Presently the door opened and the old minister’s face appeared, that face which had looked in at every house in the valley whenever trouble brooded there, and always had brought with it good cheer and hope for now close upon half-a-century.

“A wet day, Mrs. Trent, a wet day.  But seems to me there are signs of clearing.  It is always much pleasanter to look for fair weather than for foul, don’t you think so?”

Mrs. Trent nodded.

“Doctor McMurray,” she said, “I was almost afraid to go to the door when I heard you drive up; I thought the lawyers might be coming already.”

“The lawyers?” he echoed, “What, can they be troubling you again?”

“Yes, I got a letter from the district attorney’s office yesterday saying that he would send a couple of men out to-day.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Trent, for I know it will be hard for you to go over the thing again.  I had hoped that when your husband’s trial was over they would let you alone.  Now that poor Jacob has paid the biggest price a man can pay, it seems that common decency ought to keep them from worrying you about the matter any more.”

“Well,” she said, clasping her hands and looking absently out the window, “I presume they want to make quite sure.  Mrs. Withey’s case is coming up again the first of the week, you know, and there must be no mistake.”