When David met her the second time, it was a few days after his return home. He was at work in the smoke-house. The meat had been salted down long enough after the killing: it must be hung, and he was engaged in hanging it. Several pieces lay piled inside the door suitably for the hand. He stood with his back to these beside the meat bench, scraping the saltpetre off a large middling and rubbing it with red pepper. Suddenly the light of the small doorway failed; and turning he beheld his mother, and a few feet behind her--David said that he did not believe in miracles--but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine presence. Believe it or not, there she was, the miracle! All the bashfulness of his lifetime--it had often made existence well-nigh insupportable--came crowding into that one moment. The feeblest little bleat of a spring lamb too weak to stand up for the first time would have been a deafening roar in comparison with the silence which now penetrated to the marrow of his bones. He faced the two women at bay, with one hand resting on the middling. "This is my son," said his mother neutrally, turning to the young lady. This information did not help David at all. He knew who HE was. He took it for granted that every one present knew. The visitor at once relieved the situation. "This is the school-teacher," she said, coloring and smiling. "I have been teaching here ever since you went away. And I am now an old resident of this neighborhood." Not a thing moved about David except a little smoke in the chimney of his throat. But the young lady did not wait for more silence to render things more tense. She stepped forward into the doorway beside his mother and peered curiously in, looking up at the smoke-blackened joists, at the black cross sticks on which the links of sausages were hung, at the little heap of gray ashes in the ground underneath with a ring of half-burnt chips around them, at the huge meat bench piled with salted joints. "And this is the way you make middlings?" she inquired, smiling at him encouragingly. The idea of that archangel knowing anything about middlings! David's mind executed a rudimentary movement, and his tongue and lips responded feebly:-- "This is the way." "And this is the way you make hams, sugar-cured hams?" "This is the way." "And this is the way you make--shoulders?" "This is the way." David had found an answer, and he was going to abide by it while strength and daylight lasted. The young lady seemed to perceive that this was his intention. "Let me see you HANG one," she said desperately. "I have never seen bacon hanged--or hung. I suppose as I teach grammar, I must use both participles." David caught up the huge middling by the string and swung it around in front of him, whereupon it slipped out of his nerveless fingers and fell over in the ashes. It did not break the middling, but it broke the ice. "Can I help you?"