chilblains she could not stand the snow; at any rate, the chill struck
upwards. Well, she has been in bliss three years, three whole years, and
how thankful I ought to be for that. How glad she will be to see Barbara
too, if it pleases God in His mercy to take Barbara; she always was her
favourite sister. I ought to remember that; I ought to remember that
what I lose here I gain there, that my store is always growing in
Heaven. But I can't, for I am a man still. Oh! curse it all! I can't,
and like Job I wish I'd never been born. Job got a new family and
was content, but that's their Eastern way. It's different with us
Englishmen."

He stumbled on for a hundred yards or more, vacuously, almost drunkenly,
for the hideous agony that he was enduring half paralysed his brain, and
by its very excess was bringing him some temporary relief. He looked at
the raging sea to his right, and in a vague fashion wished that it had
swallowed him. He looked at the kind earth of the ploughed field to his
left, and wished vividly, for the idea was more familiar, that six feet
of it lay above him. Then he remembered that just beyond that sand-heap
he had found a plover's nest with two eggs in it fifty years ago when
he was a boy, and had taken one egg and left the other, or rather had
restored it because the old bird screamed so pitifully about him. In
some strange manner that little, long-forgotten act of righteousness
brought a glow of comfort to his tormented spirit. Perhaps God would
deal so by him.

In its way the evening was very beautiful. The cold November day was
dying into night. Clear, clear was the sky save for some black and heavy
snow clouds that floated on it driven before the easterly wind that
piped through the sere grasses and blew the plovers over him as though
they were dead leaves. Where the sun had vanished long bars of purple