in a silvery mist which died into the moonlit blue, while in the fields
the sharpness of the shadows thrown by the scattered trees made a marvel
of black and white.

The minister, in spite of a fighting creed, possessed a measure of
gentler susceptibilities, and the beauty of this basin in the chalk
hills, this winter triumphant, these lights of home and fellowship in
the cottage windows disputing with the forlornness of the snow, crept
into his soul. His mind travelled from the physical purity and hardness
before him to the purity and hardness of the inner life--the purity that
Christ blessed, the 'hardness' that the Christian endures. And such
thoughts brought him pleasure as he walked--the mystic's pleasure.

Suddenly he saw a woman cross the snowy green in front of him. She had
come from the road leading to the hill, and her pace was hurried. Her
shawl was muffled round her head, but he recognised her, and his mood
fell. She was the wife of Isaac Costrell, and she was hurrying to the
'Spotted Deer,' a public-house which lay just beyond the village, on the
road to the mill. Already several times that week had he seen her going
in or coming out. Talk had begun to reach him, and he said to himself
to-night, as he saw her, that Isaac Costrell's wife was going to ruin.

The thought oppressed him, pricked his pastoral conscience. Isaac was
his right-hand man: dull to all the rest of the world, but not dull to
the minister. With Mr. Drew sometimes he would break into talk of
religion, and the man's dark eyes would lose their film. His big
troubled self spoke with that accent of truth which lifts common talk
and halting texts to poetry. The minister, himself more of a pessimist
than his sermons showed, felt a deep regard for him. Could nothing be
done to save Isaac's wife and Isaac? Not so long ago Bessie Costrell had