the meeting of the closed lips, suggested a faculty of indignation
unsparing toward injustice; while the clearness of the heaven of the
forehead gave confidence that such indignation would never show itself
save for another.

I wish, presumptuous wish! that I could see the mind of a woman grow as
she sits spinning or weaving: it would reveal the process next highest
to creation. But the only hope of ever understanding such things lies
in growing oneself. There is the still growth of the moonlit night of
reverie; cloudy, with wind, and a little rain, comes the morning of
thought, when the mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then
wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and lightning
abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of vision and leaps of
understanding and resolve; then floats up the mystic twilight
eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay of compelled progress, when,
bidding farewell to that which is behind, the soul is driven toward
that which is before, grasping at it with all the hunger of the new
birth. The story of God's universe lies in the growth of the individual
soul. Kirsty's growth had been as yet quiet and steady.

Once more as she shifted her needle her glance went flitting over the
waste before her. This time there was more life in sight. Far away
Kirsty descried something of the nature of man upon horse: to say how
far would have been as difficult for one unused to the flat moor as for
a landsman to reckon distances at sea. Of the people of the place,
hardly another, even under the direction of Kirsty, could have
contrived to see it. At length, after she had looked many times, she
could clearly distinguish a youth on a strong, handsome hill-pony, and
remained no longer in the slightest doubt as to who he might be.