in as much as he was ready to help, he recoiled from meddling.  To meddle is to destroy the holy chance.  Meddlesomeness is the very opposite of helpfulness, for it consists in forcing your self into another self, instead of opening your self as a refuge to the other.  They are opposite extremes, and, like all extremes, touch.  It is not correct that extremes meet; they lean back to back.  To Polwarth, a human self was a shrine to be approached with reverence, even when he bore deliverance in his hand.  Anywhere, everywhere, in the seventh heaven or the seventh hell, he could worship God with the outstretched arms of love, the bended knees of joyous adoration, but in helping his fellow, he not only worshiped but served God—­ministered, that is, to the wants of God—­doing it unto Him in the least of His.  He knew that, as the Father unresting works for the weal of men, so every son, following the Master-Son, must work also.  Through weakness and suffering he had learned it.  But he never doubted that his work as much as his bread would be given him, never rushed out wildly snatching at something to do for God, never helped a lazy man to break stones, never preached to foxes.  It was what the Father gave him to do that he cared to do, and that only.  It was the man next him that he helped—­the neighbor in need of the help he had.  He did not trouble himself greatly about the happiness of men, but when the time and the opportunity arrived in which to aid the struggling birth of the eternal bliss, the whole strength of his being responded to the call.  And now, having felt a thread vibrate, like a sacred spider he sat in the center of his web of love, and waited and watched.

In proportion as the love is pure, and only in proportion to that, can such be a pure and real calling.  The least speck of self will defile it—­a little more may ruin its most hopeful effort.

Two days after, he heard, from some of the boys hurrying to the pond, that Mrs. Faber was missing.  He followed them, and from a spot beyond the house, looking down upon the lake, watched their proceedings.  He saw them find her bonnet—­a result which left him room to doubt.  Almost the next moment a wavering film of blue smoke rising from the Old House caught his eye.  It did not surprise him, for he knew Dorothy Drake was in the habit of going there—­knew also by her face for what she went:  accustomed to seek solitude himself, he knew the relations of it.  Very little had passed between them.  Sometimes two persons are like two drops running alongside of each other down a window-pane:  one marvels how it is they can so long escape running together.  Persons fit to be bosom friends will meet and part for years, and never say much beyond good-morning and good-night.