that one moment. The feeblest little bleat of a spring lamb too
weak to stand up for the first time would have been a deafening
roar in comparison with the silence which now penetrated to the
marrow of his bones. He faced the two women at bay, with one hand
resting on the middling.

"This is my son," said his mother neutrally, turning to the young
lady. This information did not help David at all. He knew who HE
was. He took it for granted that every one present knew. The
visitor at once relieved the situation.

"This is the school-teacher," she said, coloring and smiling. "I
have been teaching here ever since you went away. And I am now an
old resident of this neighborhood."

Not a thing moved about David except a little smoke in the chimney
of his throat. But the young lady did not wait for more silence to
render things more tense. She stepped forward into the doorway
beside his mother and peered curiously in, looking up at the smoke-
blackened joists, at the black cross sticks on which the links of
sausages were hung, at the little heap of gray ashes in the ground
underneath with a ring of half-burnt chips around them, at the huge
meat bench piled with salted joints.

"And this is the way you make middlings?" she inquired, smiling at
him encouragingly.

The idea of that archangel knowing anything about middlings!
David's mind executed a rudimentary movement, and his tongue and
lips responded feebly:--