“I fancied,” he continued evasively, “that I had authority to set myself apart from my fellow-workmen, to be a teacher and guide to the true life. But it was a great error. The true life was the life of work, and no one ever had authority to turn from it. Christ Himself came as a labouring man.” “That is true,” said Annie; and his words transfigured the man who spoke them, so that her heart turned reverently toward him. “But if you had been meant to work in a mill all your life,” she pursued, “would you have been given the powers you have, and that you have just used to save me from despair?” The minister rose, and said, with a sigh: “No one was meant to work in a mill all his life. Good night.” She would have liked to keep him longer, but she could not think how, at once. As he turned to go out through the Boltons' part of the house, “Won't you go out through my door?” she asked, with a helpless effort at hospitality. “Oh, if you wish,” he answered submissively. When she had closed the door upon him she went to speak with Mrs. Bolton. She was in the kitchen mixing flour to make bread, and Annie traced her by following the lamp-light through the open door. It discovered Bolton sitting in the outer doorway, his back against one jamb and his stocking-feet resting against the base of the other. “Mrs. Bolton,” Annie began at once, making herself free of one of the hard kitchen chairs, “how is Mr. Peck getting on in Hatboro'?” “I d'know as I know just what you mean, Miss Kilburn,” said Mrs. Bolton, on the defensive. “I mean, is there a party against him in his church? Is he unpopular?” Mrs. Bolton took some flour and sprinkled it on her bread-board; then she lifted the mass of dough out of the trough before her, and let it sink softly upon the board. “I d'know as you can say he's unpoplah. He ain't poplah with some. Yes, there's a party--the Gerrish party.” “Is it a strong one?” “It's pretty strong.” “Do you think it will prevail?” “Well, most o' folks don't know _what_ they want; and if there's some folks that know what they _don't_ want, they can generally keep from havin' it.” Bolton made a soft husky prefatory noise of protest in his throat, which seemed to stimulate his wife to a more definite assertion, and she cut in before he could speak-- “_I_ should say that unless them that stood Mr. Peck's friends first off, and got him here, done something to keep him, his enemies wa'n't goin' to take up his cause.” Annie divined a personal reproach for Bolton in the apparent abstraction. “Oh, now, you'll see it'll all come out right in the end, Pauliny,” he mildly opposed. “There ain't any such great feelin' about Mr. Peck; nothin' but what'll work itself off perfec'ly natural, give it time. It's goin' to come out all right.” “Yes, at the day o' jedgment,” Mrs. Bolton assented, plunging her fists into the dough, and beginning to work a contempt for her husband's optimism into it.