rible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will
for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this
resolution had been an immense effort--he trembled at the thought of
seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of
the surgeon's knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense
rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of
witnessing her trial.

Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration,
the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter
regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible
Right--all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of
the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd
into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the
previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had
only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had
always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all
that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment's
stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do
the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a
soul full of new awe and new pity.

"O God," Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at
the face of the watch, "and men have suffered like this before...and
poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while
ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing 'em all, her grandfather
and all of 'em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor
Hetty...dost think on it now?"

Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to
whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs.
It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over?

Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and
said, "I'm just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out
of court for a bit."

Adam's heart beat so violently he was unable to speak--he could only
return the pressure of his friend's hand--and Bartle, drawing up the
other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his
spectacles.

"That's a thing never happened to me before," he observed, "to go out o'
the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take 'em off."

The old man made this trivia