r him.
He will make or break. Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor
thing, those he loves nor those he hates. He will go on--and to go on,
all means, so they be not criminal, will be his. Men will prophesy great
things for him--they do so now. But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps
pace with his resolve."

"How does thee know these things?"

His question was one of wonder and surprise. He had never before seen in
her this sharp discernment and criticism.

"How know I, Davy? I know him by studying thee. What thee is not he is.
What he is thee is not." The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint
of yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far
over and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of
light, at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered
House, and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others,
like dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea. David's eyes were on the
distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply
impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future.

"And shall I not also go on?" he asked.

"How far, who can tell?"

There was a plaintive note in her voice--the unavailing and sad protest
of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood
fly safely away, looking not back.

"What does thee see for me afar, Faith?" His look was eager.

"The will of God, which shall be done," she said with a sudden
resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like
those of Titian's Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the
Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others.
Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages
suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart
against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister's child and
to her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of
others. In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have
a place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by
a heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father's
garden. She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as
is many a woman when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged
before them all that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he
should have played it was nothing; that she should not h