’He always said he was stronger than he had ever been before, after that fever.’  ’He might think so, but I have my doubts.  He was a very pleasant young man, but he did not stand nursing very well.  He got tired of being coddled, as he called it.  J hope they’ll soon come back to England, and then he’ll have a chance for his health.  I wonder now, if she speaks English; but, to be sure, he can speak foreign tongues like anything, as I’ve heard the minister say.’  And so we went on for some time, till she became drowsy over her knitting, on the sultry summer afternoon; and I stole away for a walk, for I wanted some solitude in which to think over things, and, alas! to blame myself with poignant stabs of remorse.

I lounged lazily as soon as I got to the wood.  Here and there the bubbling, brawling brook circled round a great stone, or a root of an old tree, and made a pool; otherwise it coursed brightly over the gravel and stones.  I stood by one of these for more than half an hour, or, indeed, longer, throwing bits of wood or pebbles into the water, and wondering what I could do to remedy the present state of things.  Of course all my meditation was of no use; and at length the distant sound of the horn employed to tell the men far afield to leave off work, warned me that it was six o’clock, and time for me to go home.  Then I caught wafts of the loud-voiced singing of the evening psalm.  As I was crossing the Ashfield, I saw the minister at some distance talking to a man.  I could not hear what they were saying, but I saw an impatient or dissentient (I could not tell which) gesture on the part of the former, who walked quickly away, and was apparently absorbed in his thoughts, for though be passed within twenty yards of me, as both our paths converged towards home, he took no notice of me.  We passed the evening in a way which was even worse than dinner-time.  The minister was silent, depressed, even irritable.  Poor cousin Holman was utterly perplexed by this unusual frame of mind and temper in her husband; she was not well herself, and was suffering from the extreme and sultry heat, which made her less talkative than usual.  Phillis, usually so reverently tender to her parents, so soft, so gentle, seemed now to take no notice of the unusual state of things, but talked to me—­to any one, on indifferent subjects, regardless of her father’s gravity, of her mother’s piteous looks of bewilderment.  But once my eyes fell upon her hands, concealed under the table, and I could see the passionate, convulsive manner in which she laced and interlaced her fingers perpetually, wringing them together from time to time, wringing till the compressed flesh became perfectly white.  What could I do?  I talked with her, as I saw she wished; her grey eyes had dark circles round them and a strange kind of dark light in them; her cheeks were flushed, but her lips were white and wan.  I wondered that others did not read these signs as clearly as I did.  But perhaps they did; I think, from what came afterwards, the minister did.  Poor cousin Holman! she worshipped her husband; and the outward signs of his uneasiness were more patent to her simple heart than were her daughter’s.  After a while she could bear it no longer.  She got up, and, softly laying her hand on his broad stooping shoulder, she said,—­