David himself, recalled to his position, went away from the blacksmith's shed and walked through the village towards Mrs Miles's cottage. It was now quite dark, and wild gusts of wind were sweeping across the fields, and up the street where thatched cottages stood back in little gardens with rows of bright chrysanthemums in flower before them. The children were safe in bed, the women, many of them, out talking or buying. Quite a little knot was gathered in the little shop which provided both groceries and clothing, and from which a cheerful light gleamed out upon the wet road. The warm brightness beckoned invitingly to the young man, who, as was not unusual with him, was both tired and hungry. He stopped for a moment to look with an almost wistful gaze at the group. The women were laughing at some jest, even the pinched features were smoothed and brightened. A little bitterness surged up in his heart as he contrasted himself with these people whom he was yearning over, spending himself for, and who would have given him, perhaps, scarcely so much as a kind word. What was he to them? And what were they to him that he should wrestle for them, ay, even give up his dearest hopes in life? There was Nat Wills's mother laughing with the rest, while David was hungry because he had shared his little with the boy whom he, and he only, had walked those weary miles to reclaim. There was a thin woman whose husband was a drunkard, there was another whose daughter had left her,--he knew all the histories of these poor sin-stained lives, and for the instant a bitter sense of injustice swept upon him. Was he forever to stay in the darkness and the cold? Must he always put from himself light and love and pleasantness for the sake of those who neither cared for nor would hearken to him? Might he not turn away and leave them to their fate? Ah, if he, standing thus, could repel the impulse, by the might of the love which bound him to their souls, do you not think that the Greater Love which helped him in his struggle would lead him with infinite tenderness, out of his loneliness and self-deception, into the full light of the perfect truth? CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. Faith, when she heard the knock at the back door, knew very well who had come, and her heart leaped up, for all day she had felt as if she could scarcely longer endure the suspense in which she was placed, and had been blaming David with the unreasonableness of impatience for not coming during the hours in which he was employed at the post-office. She jumped up and stopped a younger girl who was going to answer the knock. But when she had opened the door and saw David himself, all her little reproachful speeches were forgotten. "I don't know that you'd best come in," she said hurriedly. "Sarah would be pleased to see you, but she and Jane are both there, and there's things I want to hear."