'Yes, sir--' and for the first time the minister heard in the boy's voice the tone of a man's judgment. 'I couldn't have Louie on me just yet. I was going to ask you, sir, not to tell the people at Clough End you've seen me. It would make it very hard. You know what Louie is--and she's all right. She's learnt a trade.' 'What trade?' 'Silk-weaving--from Margaret Dawson.' 'Poor soul--poor saint! There'd be more things than her trade to be learnt from Margaret Dawson if anyone had a mind to learn them. What of 'Lias?' 'Oh, he died, sir, a week after I left.' The lad's voice dropped. Then he added slowly, looking away, 'Tom said he was very quiet--he didn't suffer much--not at the end.' 'Aye, the clouds lift at sunset,' said Mr. Ancrum in an altered tone; 'the air clears before the night!' His head fell forward on his breast, and he sat drumming on the table. They had finished supper, the little, bustling landlady had cleared away, and Davy was thinking of going. Suddenly the minister sprang up and stood before the fire, looking down at his guest. 'Davy, do you want to know why I didn't write to you? I was ill first--very ill; then--_I was in hell!_' David started. Into the thin, crooked face, with the seeking eyes, there had flashed an expression--sinister, indescribable, a sort of dumb rage. It changed the man altogether. 'I was in hell!' he repeated slowly. 'I know no more about it. Other people may tell you, perhaps, if you come across them--I can't. There were days at Clough End--always a certain number in the year--when this earth slipped away from me, and the fiends came about me, but this was months. They say I was overdone in the cotton famine years ago just before I came to Clough End. I got pneumonia after I left you that May--it doesn't matter. When I knew there was a sun again, I wrote to ask about you. You had left Kinder and gone--no one knew where.' David sat nervously silent, not knowing what to say, his mind gradually filling with the sense of something tragic, irreparable. Mr. Ancrum, too, stood straight before him, as though turned to stone. A t last David got up and approached him. Had Ancrum been looking he must have been touched by the change in the lad's expression. The hard self-reliant force of the face had melted into feeling. 'Are you better now, sir? I knew you must have been ill,' he stammered. Ancrum started as though just wakened. 'Ill? Yes, I was pretty bad,' he said briskly, and in his most ordinary tone, though with a long breath.' But I'm as fit as anything now. Good night, Davy, good night. Come a walk with me some day? Sunday afternoon? Done. Here, write me your new address.' The tall form and curly black head disappeared, the little lodging-house room, with its round rosewood table, its horsehair sofa, its chiffonnier, and its prints of 'Sport at Balmoral' and 'The Mother's Kiss,' had resumed the dingy formality of every day.