It was busy with many greater things.  And among them the little word to which his sister’s finger had pointed, lodged itself whether he would or no, and often when he would not.  Now NOW, —­ “God NOW commandeth all men everywhere to repent.”  It was at the back of Winthrop’s thoughts, wherever they might be; it hung over his mental landscape like the rain-cloud; he could look at nothing, as it were, but across the gentle shadows of that truth falling upon his conscience.  The rain-drops dimpled it into the water, when the road lay by the river-side; and the bare tree-stems they were passing, that said so much of the past and the future, said also quietly and soberly, “NOW.”  The very stage-coach reminded him he was on a journey to the end of which the stage-coach could not bring him, and for the end of which he had no plans nor no preparations made.  And the sweet images of home said, “now —­ make them.”  And yet all this, though true and real in his spirit, was so still and so softly defined, that, —­ like the reflection of the hills in the smooth water of the river, —­ he noted without noting, he saw without dwelling upon it.  It was the depth of the picture, and his mind chose the stronger outlines.  And then the water ruffled, and the reflection was lost.

The ride was in dull silence, till after some hours the coachman stopped to give his horses water; though he remarked, “it was contrary in them to want it.”  But after that his tongue seemed loosed.

“Dampish!” he remarked to his fellow-traveller, as he climbed up to his place again and took the reins.

“Can you stand it?” said Winthrop.

“Stand what?”

“Being wet through at this rate?”

“Don’t signify whether a man’s killed one way or another,” was the somewhat unhopeful answer.  “Come to the same thing in the long run, I expect.”

“Might as well make as long a run as you can of it.  Why don’t you wear some sort of an overcoat?”

“I keep it —­ same way you do yourn. —­ No use to spoil a thing for nothing.  There’s no good of an overcoat but to hold so much heft of water, and a man goes lighter without it.  As long as you’ve got to be soaked through, what’s the odds?”

“I didn’t lay my account with this sort of thing when I set out,” said Winthrop.

“O I did.  I have it about a third of the time, I guess.  This and March is the plaguiest months in the hull year.  They do use up a man.”

Some thread of association brought his little sister’s open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he was silent.

“Yours is rather bad business this time of year,” he remarked.

“Like all other business,” said the man; “aint much choice.  There’s a wet and a dry to most things.  What’s yourn? if I may ask.”

“Wet,” said Winthrop.

“How? —­” said the man.

“You need only look at me to see,” said Winthrop.