He did look about his study sadly while he was making ready to leave it. The fire in the base-burner was quite warm, now, and his wet, much-darned stockings were beginning to dry. The room looked sheltered and pleasant; his books ran to the ceiling, though his floor was covered with straw matting, with odd pieces of woolen carpet for rugs; his carpet-covered lounge was wheeled out of the draft; his lamp with the green shade made a little circle of light and coziness; his Bible and prayer-book lay open within it, beside the pile of sermons. He had meant to devote the evening to the agreeable duty of selecting his discourse for Saint Agatha's. His mind and his heart were brimming over with the excitement of that great event. He would have liked to concentrate and consecrate his thoughts upon it that evening. As he went, coughing, into the cold entry, it occurred to him that the spot in his lung was more painful than he had supposed; but he pulled his old cap over his ears, and his thin overcoat up to meet it, and tramped out cheerfully into the storm. "Well, well, my lad!" he said in his warm-hearted way to Dobson's boy; "I 'm sorry for you that you have to be out a night like this." The boy spoke of this afterwards, and remembered it long--for a boy. But at the time he did but stare. He stopped grumbling, however, and plunged on into the drifts, ahead of the old rector, kicking a path for him to right and left in the wet, packed snow; for the widow Peek lived at least a mile away, and the storm was now become a virulent thing. What passed between the unloved, neglected, dying parishoner and her pastor was not known to any but themselves, nor is there witness now to testify thereof. Neither does it in any way concern the record of this narrative, except as the least may concern the largest circumstance in human story. For, in view of what came to pass, it is impossible not to put the old, judicial question: Did it pay? Was it worth while? When the miser's soul went out, at midnight, on the wings and the rage of that blind, black storm, did it pass gently, a subdued, forgiven spirit, humble to learn how to live again, for Christ's sake and his who gave himself--as his Master had before him--to comfort and to save? Did it pay? _Do_ such things pay? God knows. But as long as men do not know, there will always be found a few among them who will elect to disregard the doubt, to wear the divinity of uncalculating sacrifice, and to pay its price.