He sat musing in the great chair. Four years.... Four years in this still house. He felt a great pity for the old man lying drawn and crumpled there beside him, a pity and affection. The two were kindred. He had this refuge, this nook in the world, this home to be grateful for, and he was grateful. Moreover, the old man depended upon him, depended and clung.... Four years—four years of security and peace. They had been bought at a price. He saw himself, a silent figure, watching all things but saying naught, keeping silence, conforming, agreeing by his silence. He thought a braver man would not have been so silent.... Four years—four years of the quietest routine, going where there was sickness and he was called, wandering far afield in a country not thickly peopled, lying musing by streams or in deep woods, or moving upon long bare hilltops with the storm sky or the blue sky, going punctually to church each Sunday, paying to the tithing-man some part of his scant earnings ... then at the Oak Grange sitting with this old man, drawing him, when he could, out of his self-absorption and his fears. Aderhold was tender with his fears; that which weighed upon his own soul was his own fear, and it made him comprehend the other’s terrors, idle though he thought they were. He thought that from some other dimension his own would seem as idle—and yet they bowed him down, and kept him forever fabricating a mask. Four years. In the small bare room which was called his and which, through care for old Dorothy, he himself kept and cleaned, there stood an oaken press, where under lock and key he guarded ink and pen and paper and a book that he was writing. That guess at qualities, at origins and destinies, that more or less mystical vision, taste and apprehension of ground and consequence, that intuition of all things in flood, of form out of form, of unity in motion—all that in France he had outspoken, and in speaking had like to have lost liberty and life—all that he had not spoken of here these four years, hard-by Hawthorn Village and church—all this he was striving to put there upon paper. He rose at dawn and wrote while the light strengthened; he bought himself candles and wrote at night when all the place was so still that silence grew sound. Four years—. Master Hardwick stirred, opened his eyes. “Gilbert!” “I am here, cousin.” “How long—?” “I do not know. You do not fail fast nor easily. Your body is courageous.” He gave him to drink. As he put down the cup Dorothy opened the door. Behind her appeared a man with a black dress, close-cut hair, and a steeple-crowned hat. Although the day was warm he had about him a wide cloak. He was short and thin, with a pale, acrimonious, zealot’s face. He carried in his hand a Geneva Bible. Dorothy stammered out, “Master Clement did not wish to wait, master—”