in peaceful purity, and distant hills
lifted their white summits towards the deep cold blue of the
clearing sky. Steely stars glittered and magnified their light
through the lens of the eager, frosty air, and old landmarks were
hidden, and roads familiar to the wayfarer no longer discovered
their trend. Little hillocks had taken the form of mounds, and
stretches of level waste were swept by ranges of drift and
shoulders of obstructing snow.

No sooner did Mr. Penrose look out on this new earth than a
feeling of _lostness_ came on him, and, linking his arm in that of
the old man, he said:

'Can you find the way, Malachi?'

'Wheer to, Mr. Penrose?'

'Why, to Rehoboth, of course. Where else did you think I wanted to
go at this time of night?'

'Nay, that's what I wur wonderin' when yo' axed me if I knew th'
way,' replied the old man.

'Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought perhaps the snow might throw you
off the track.'

'Throw _me_ off th' track, an' on these moors and o'? Nowe, Mr.
Penrose, I hevn't lived on 'em forty years for naught, I con tell
yo'.'

'But when you cannot see your way, what then?'

'Then I walks by instink.'

And by instinct the two men crossed the wastes of snow towards the
Green Fold Clough, through which gorge lay the path that led to
the village below.

Just as they traversed the edge of the Red Moss, old Malachi broke
the silence by saying:

'Well, Mr. Penrose, what do yo' think o' yon?'

'Think of what, Malachi?' asked the perplexed divine, for neither
of them, for some moments, had spoken.

'Think o' yon lad as has getten killed, and o' his mother?'

There are times when a man dares not utter his deepest feelings
because of the commonplace character of the words through which
they only can find expression. If Malachi had asked Mr. Penrose to
write the character of God on a blackboard before a class of
infants, he would not have been placed in a greater difficulty
than that now involved by the question of Malachi. Already his
mind was dark with the problem of suffering. Little Job's cry for
'the candle of the Almeety' had reached depths he knew not were
hidden in his heart; while the look in the mother's face, as she
stood snow-covered in the doorway of the farmstead, and as the
firelight lent its glare to her blanched and pain-wrought face,
continued ceaselessly to haunt him. And now Malachi wanted to know
what he thought of it all! How could he tell him?

Finding Mr. Penro