He sat a few moments longer, then took his lamp and crept softly out of the room and down the stairs. The sitting-room was icily cold now; the white curtains stirred noiselessly. He sat down before the little side table and opened the great book. There were some thirty leaves between the Old and New Testaments, most of them stitched in. A few at the end were blank. Some of the records were obscure. “March 5th, 1840. Saw light on this subject.” Others ran: “Sept. 1 st, 1843. Rec. Peter Cavendish, fugitive.” “Dec. 3d, ditto. Rec. Robert Henry.” “April 15th, ditto. Rec. one, Æsop,” and so on. “Dec. 14th, 1848. Have had consolation from prayer for public evil.” “April 20th, 1858. My son, Charles Sebastian, born.” “April 7th, 1862. My wife, Jane Sebastian, died.” “July 5th, 1862. Rec. Keziah Andrews to keep my house.” The dates of the entries from that point grew further apart, random and obscure; here and there a fact. “Nov. 4th, 1876. Charles Sebastian departed.” “June 9th, 1877. Rec. Harriet.” “Jan. 19th, 1880. Have wrestled in prayer without consolation for Charles Sebastian.” This was the last entry. A faint line ran down across the page connecting the end of “Harriet” with the beginning of “Charles.” Between the two blank leaves at the end was a photograph of himself at seventeen. He remembered suddenly how it was taken by a travelling photographer, who had stirred his soul with curiosity and given him the picture; and David Sebastian had taken it and silently put it away among blank leaves of the Bible. Sebastian shivered. The written leaves, the look of himself of twenty years before, the cold, the wail of the wind, the clicking flakes on the window panes, these seemed now to be the dominant facts of life. Narrow was it, poor and meagre, to live and labor with a barren farm? The old abolitionist had cut deeper into existence than he had. If to deal with the fate of races, and wrestle alone with God on Edom Hill, were not knowledge and experience, what was knowledge or experience, or what should a man call worth the trial of his brain and nerve? “He passed me. He won hands down,” he muttered, bending over the page again. “'Rec. Harriet.' That's too much for me.” And he heard a quick noise behind him and turned. She stood in the door, wide-eyed, smooth, pale hair falling over one shoulder, long cloak half slipped from the other, holding a shotgun, threatening and stem. “What are you doing here?” “Out gunning for me?” asked Sebastian gravely. She stared wildly, put the gun down, cried: “You're Charlie Sebastian!” and fell on her knees beside the stove, choking, sobbing and shaking, crouching against the cold sheet iron in a kind of blind memory of its warmth and protection. “You still have the drop on me,” said Sebastian. She shivered and crouched still and whispered: “I'm cold.” “How long have you been here freezing?” Sebastian thrust anything inflammable at hand into the stove, lit it and piled in the wood.