I suppose my tone revealed to his quick perceptions that “more was meant than met the ear.”  He looked up from his work, his tool filled with an uncompleted shaving.

“And when the heart gets cold,” I went on, “it is not easily warmed again.  The fire’s hard to light there, Thomas.”

Still he looked at me, stooping over his work, apparently with a presentiment of what was coming.

“I fear there is no way of lighting it again, except the blacksmith’s way.”

“Hammering the iron till it is red-hot, you mean, sir?”

“I do.  When a man’s heart has grown cold, the blows of affliction must fall thick and heavy before the fire can be got that will light it.—­When did you see your daughter Catherine, Thomas?”

His head dropped, and he began to work as if for bare life.  Not a word came from the form now bent over his tool as if he had never lifted himself up since he first began in the morning.  I could just see that his face was deadly pale, and his lips compressed like those of one of the violent who take the kingdom of heaven by force.  But it was for no such agony of effort that his were thus closed.  He went on working till the silence became so lengthened that it seemed settled into the endless.  I felt embarrassed.  To break a silence is sometimes as hard as to break a spell.  What Thomas would have done or said if he had not had this safety-valve of bodily exertion, I cannot even imagine.

“Thomas,” I said, at length, laying my hand on his shoulder, “you are not going to part company with me, I hope?”

“You drive a man too far, sir.  I’ve given in more to you than ever I did to man, sir; and I don’t know that I oughtn’t to be ashamed of it.  But you don’t know where to stop.  If we lived a thousand years you would be driving a man on to the last.  And there’s no good in that, sir.  A man must be at peace somewhen.”

“The question is, Thomas, whether I would be driving you on or back.  You and I too must go on or back.  I want to go on myself, and to make you go on too.  I don’t want to be parted from you now or then.”

“That’s all very well, sir, and very kind, I don’t doubt; but, as I said afore, a man must be at peace somewhen.”

“That’s what I want so much that I want you to go on.  Peace!  I trust in God we shall both have it one day, somewhen, as you say.  Have you got this peace so plentifully now that you are satisfied as you are?  You will never get it but by going on.”

“I do not think there is any good got in stirring a puddle.  Let by-gones be by-gones.  You make a mistake, sir, in rousing an anger which I would willingly let sleep.”

“Better a wakeful anger, and a wakeful conscience with it, than an anger sunk into indifference, and a sleeping dog of a conscience that will not bark.  To have ceased to be angry is not one step nearer to your daughter.  Better strike her, abuse her, with the chance of a kiss to follow.  Ah, Thomas, you are like Jonas with his gourd.”