They rode silently.  At least if Mr. Underhill’s wonted talkativeness found vent at all, it was more than Winthrop was able ever to recollect.  He could remember nothing of the ride but his own thoughts; and it seemed to him afterwards that they must have been stunning as well as deafening; so vague and so blended was the impression of them mixed up with the impression of everything else.  It was what Mr. Underhill called ‘falling weather’; the rain dropped lightly, or by turns changing to mist hung over the river and wreathed itself about the hills, and often stood across his path; as if to bid the eye turn inward, for space to range without it might not have.  And passing all the other journeys he had made up and down that road, some of them on horseback as he was now, Winthrop’s thoughts went back to that first one, when through ill weather and discouragement he had left the home he was now seeking, to enter upon his great-world career.  Why did they so?  He had been that road in the rain since; he had been there in all weathers; he had been there often with as desponding a heart as brought him down that first time; which indeed did not despond at all then, though it felt the weight of life’s undertakings and drawbacks.  And the warm rain, and yellow, sun-coloured mist of this April day, had no likeness to the cold, pitiless, pelting December storm.  Yet passing all the times between, his mind went back constantly to that first one.  He felt over again, though as in a dream, its steps of loneliness and heart-sinking —­ its misty looking forward —­ and most especially that Bible word ‘Now’ —­ which his little sister’s finger had pointed out to him.  He remembered how constantly that day it came back to him in everything he looked at, —­ from the hills, from the river, from the beat of the horses’ hoofs, from the falling rain.  ‘Now’ —­ ‘now’ —­ he remembered how he had felt it that day; he had almost forgotten it since; but now it came up again to his mind as if that day had been but yesterday.  What brought it there?  Was it the unrecognized, unallowed sense, that the one of all the world who most longed to have him obey that word, might be to-day beyond seeing him obey it —­ for ever?  Was it possibly, that passing over the bridge of Mirza’s vision he suddenly saw himself by the side of one of the open trap-doors, and felt that some stay, some security he needed, before his own foot should open one for itself?  He did not ask; he did not try to order the confused sweep of feeling which for the time passed over him; one dread idea for the time held mastery of all others, and kept that day’s ride all on the edge of that open trap-door.  Whose foot had gone down there? —­ And under that thought, —­ woven in with the various tapestry of shower and sunshine, meadow and hillside, that clothed his day’s journey to the sense, —­ were the images of that day in December —­ that final leaving of home and his mother, that rainy cold ride on the stage-coach, Winnie’s open Bible, and the ‘Now,’ to which her finger, his mother’s prayers, and his own conscience, had pointed all the day long.