Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.  The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right—­all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness.  It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment’s stroke that had never left a bruise.  Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

“O God,” Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, “and men have suffered like this before...and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing ’em all, her grandfather and all of ’em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor Hetty...dost think on it now?”

Adam started and looked round towards the door.  Vixen had begun to whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs.  It was Bartle Massey come back.  Could it be all over?

Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and said, “I’m just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out of court for a bit.”

Adam’s heart beat so violently he was unable to speak—­he could only return the pressure of his friend’s hand—­and Bartle, drawing up the other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his spectacles.

“That’s a thing never happened to me before,” he observed, “to go out o’ the door with my spectacles on.  I clean forgot to take ’em off.”

The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond at all to Adam’s agitation:  he would gather, in an indirect way, that there was nothing decisive to communicate at present.

“And now,” he said, rising again, “I must see to your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning.  He’ll be angry with me if you don’t have it.  Come, now,” he went on, bringing forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, “I must have a bit and a sup myself.  Drink a drop with me, my lad—­drink with me.”

Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, “Tell me about it, Mr. Massey—­tell me all about it.  Was she there?  Have they begun?”