Mr. Crathie was slowly recovering, but still very weak. He did not, after having turned the corner, get well so fast as his medical minister judged he ought, and the reason was plain to Lizzy, dimly perceptible to his wife: he was ill at ease. A man may have more mind and more conscience, and more discomfort in both or either, than his neighbors give him credit for. They may be in the right about him up to a certain point in his history, but then a crisis, by them unperceived, perhaps to them inappreciable, arrived, after which the man to all eternity could never be the same as they had known him. Such a change must appear improbable, and save on the theory of a higher operative power is improbable because impossible. But a man who has not created himself can never secure himself against the inroad of the glorious terror of that Goodness which was able to utter him into being, with all its possible wrongs and repentances. The fact that a man has never, up to any point yet, been aware of aught beyond himself cannot shut Him out who is beyond him, when at last He means to enter. Not even the soul-benumbing visits of his clerical minister could repress the swell of the slow-mounting dayspring in the soul of the hard, commonplace, business-worshiping man, Hector Crathie. The hireling would talk to him kindly enough--of his illness or of events of the day, especially those of the town and neighborhood, and encourage him with reiterated expression of the hope that ere many days they would enjoy a tumbler together as of old; but as to wrong done, apology to make, forgiveness to be sought or consolation to be found, the dumb dog had not uttered a bark. The sources of the factor's restless discomfort were now two--the first, that he had lifted his hand to women; the second, the old ground of his quarrel with Malcolm brought up by Lizzy.