was counted a wit.

Reddin gave a great roar of laughter.

'Both!' he said.

'Neither!' whispered Hazel, who had been poised indecisively, as if
half prepared to go to the door. She sat further into the shadow. In
another moment he was gone.

'Whoever she be,' said the publican, nodding his large head wisely,
'have her he will, for certain sure!'

All through the night, murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water,
the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof
of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking
from uneasy slumber, heard those words and muttered them.

In her frightened dreams she reached out to something that she felt
must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water, so small and
transitory; beyond the drip and patter of human destinies--something
vast, solitary, and silent. How should she find that which none has
ever named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity,
Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in
its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence,
incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say?
The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men
are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts,
and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses upon us
ever more heavily until Death comes with his cajoling voice and