“Yes, certainly. But surely you are not going to leave Hatboro', Mr. Peck! I hoped--we all did--that after what you had seen of the strong feeling in your favour to-night you would reconsider your determination and stay with us!” She went on impetuously. “You must know--you must understand now--how much good you can do here--more than any one else--more than you could do anywhere else. I don't believe that you realise how much depends upon your staying here. You can't stop the dissensions by going away; it will only make them worse. You saw how Colonel Marvin and Mr. Wilmington were with you; and Mr. Gates--all classes. I oughtn't to speak--to attempt to teach you your duty; I'm not of your church; and I can only tell you how it seems to me: that you never can find another place where your principles--your views--” He waited for her to go on; but she really had nothing more to say, and he began: “I am not hoping for another charge elsewhere, at least not for the present; but I am satisfied that my usefulness here is at an end, and I do not think that my going away will make matters worse. Whether I go or stay, the dissensions will continue. At any rate, I believe that there are those who need help more, and whom I can help more, in another field--” “Yes,” she broke in, with a woman's relevancy to the immediate point, “there is nothing to do here.” He went on as if she had not spoken: “I am going to Fall River to-morrow, where I have heard that there is work for me--” “In the mills!” she exclaimed, recurring in thought to what he had once said of his work in them. “Surely you don't mean that!” The sight, the smell, the tumult of the work she had seen that day in the mill with Lyra came upon her with all their offence. “To throw away all that you have learnt, all that you have become to others!” “I am less and less confident that I have become anything useful to others in turning aside from the life of toil and presuming to attempt the guidance of those who remained in it. But I don't mean work in the mills,” he continued, “or not at first, or not unless it seems necessary to my work with those who work in them. I have a plan--or if it hardly deserves that name, a design--of being useful to them in such ways as my own experience of their life in the past shall show me in the light of what I shall see among them now. I needn't trouble you with it.” “Oh yes!” she interposed.