There was not a sound to be heard except the mournful lowing of some cattle in a distant field, until all at once a movement of the air brought from Whitford the sound of the old chimes muffled by the heavy atmosphere. There sat Castalia and stared at the river, and the mist, and the brown withered leaves, much as she had stared at the blank yard wall in the office. "My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me!" She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation was in harmony with all she saw, and heard, and felt. Again the voice spoke: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people!" Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound. Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace--now quick, now slow, now stopping outright. He had his hands clasped at the back of his neck; his head was bent down, and he was talking aloud to himself. "Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces through bone and marrow. I am of the number of those that go down to the pit. Why, O Lord--Nay! though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment." He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to her without hesitation. He remembered her at once; and he remembered, too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and--what was that the widow had said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it all now. The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle hard with indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind, unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.