As it started and spread, little by little it brought out of the
cheerless darkness all the features of the rough, homely, kind
face, bent over and watching it so impatiently and yet half
absently. It gave definition to the shapeless black hat, around the
brim of which still hung filaments of tow, in the folds of which
lay white splinters of hemp stalk. There was the dust of field and
barn on the edges of the thick hair about the ears; dust around the
eyes and the nostrils. He was resting on one knee; over the other
his hands were crossed--enormous, powerful, coarsened hands, the
skin so frayed and chapped that around the finger-nails and along
the cracks here and there a little blood had oozed out and dried.




XII


When David came down to his supper, all traces of the day's labor
that were removable had disappeared. He was clean; and his working
clothes had been laid aside for the cheap black-cloth suit, which
he had been used to wear on Sundays while he was a student. Grave,
gentle, looking tired but looking happy, with his big shock head of
hair and a face rugged and majestical like a youthful Beethoven. A
kind mouth, most of all, and an eye of wonderfully deep
intelligence.

The narrow, uncarpeted stairway down which he had noisily twisted
his enormous figure, with some amusement, as always, had brought
him to the dining room. This was situated between the kitchen and