What words, wonderful and secret, were there spoken it is not well to inquire.  They were for John’s wounded heart alone, and though he came from that communion weeping, it was

              —­as a child that cries,
    But crying, knows his Father near.

Nothing was different but he sat down hushed and strengthened, and in his heart and on his lips the most triumphant words a man or woman can utter, "Thy Will be done!" Then there was a great peace.  He had cast all his sorrow upon God and left it with God.  He did not bring it back with him as we are so ready to do.  It was not that he comprehended any more clearly why this sorrow and trial had come to darken his happy home, but Oh, what matters comprehension when there is faith! John did not make inquiries; he knew by experience that there are spiritual conditions as real as physical facts.  The shadows were all gone.  Nothing was different,

                   —­yet this much he knew,
    His soul stirred in its chrysalis of clay,
    A strange peace filled him like a cup; he grew
      Better, wiser and gladder, on that day: 
    This dusty, worn-out world seemed made anew,
        Because God’s Way, had now become his way.

Then he fell into that sleep which God gives to his beloved, and when he awoke it was the dayshine.  The light streamed in through the eastern windows, there was a robin singing on his window sill, and there was no trouble in his heart but what he could face.

His business was now urging him to be diligent, and his business—­being that of so many others, he durst not neglect it.  Jane he did not see.  Her maid said she had been ill all night and had fallen asleep at the dawning, and John left her a written message and went earlier to the mill than usual.  But Greenwood was there, busily examining bales of cotton and singing and scolding alternately as he worked.  John joined him and they had a hard morning’s work together, throughout which only one subject occupied both minds—­the mill and cotton to feed its looms.

In the afternoon Greenwood took up the more human phase of the question.  He told John that six of their unmarried men had gone to America.  “They think mebbe they’ll be a bit better off there, sir.  I don’t think they will.”

“Not a bit.”

“And while you were away Jeremiah Stokes left his loom forever.  It didn’t put him out any.  It was a stormy night for the flitting—­thunder and lightning and wind and rain—­but he went smiling and whispering,

    “There is a land of pure delight!”

“The woman, poor soul, had a harder journey.”

“Who was she?”

“Susanna Dobson.  You remember the little woman that came from Leeds?”

“Yes.  Loom forty.  I hope she has not left a large family.”