“Ohne Hast.”  Going slowly through the night, he strengthened himself by marking how all things in Nature accomplish a perfected life through slow, narrow fixedness of purpose,—­each life complete in itself:  why not his own, then?  The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed.  If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it.  Knowles—­that old skeptic—­believed in it, and called it Love.  Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? “Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhaelt er nicht dich, mich, sich selbst?”

There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, like half-comprehended music,—­as simple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman’s heart:  it touched him deeper than his power of control.  Pah! it was a dream of Faust’s; he, too, had his Margaret; he fell, through that love.

He went on slowly to the mill.  If the name or the words woke a subtile remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure.  Whether they should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the man, only the future could tell.

Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn.  What a just, clever fellow he was! people said:  one of those men improved by success:  just to the defrauding of himself:  saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest:  hadn’t one spark of self-esteem:  despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it:  when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly.  So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines up to him.

The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the square.  It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to keep in the furnace-fires.  Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to examine.  The management was not strict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured:  like Knowles’s carelessness.

It was Lois and her father,—­Joe Yare being feeder that night.  They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,—­a very comfortable place that stormy night.  Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without.  Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,—­down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.

The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them.  He had grown old, as Polston said,—­Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean:  that was to please Lois, of course.  She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.