"God," admitted Mrs. Huxam. "And why did He send it? We don't know yet. We pray Him not to lead us into temptation; but we well know it's a part of His discipline so to do."
"We'll look out, never fear," replied Barlow. "But we'll look out in a large spirit, Judy. We mustn't think this commodious home is a trap to make us forget our heavenly home. 'Twould be to look a gift horse in the mouth, my dear—a very ill-convenient thing against God or man."
CHAPTER IV
EVENING STAR
Only fitfully did Jacob Bullstone accept his situation. He was occasionally resigned and spoke with rational appreciation of facts; but often it seemed that his mind still stood at a point in time before his wife had passed. The actual loss he appeared to forget upon days of stress. Such moments, however, occurred less frequently than at first. Auna never resisted his proposals now, or attempted to prevent the long days alone that he was constantly planning. For she found that her father returned the better and the saner from these days. Words that man was powerless to speak, he heard from the solitudes. The hills had not covered, but they had comforted him. As the spring waxed, he increased the number of these expeditions and separated himself for longer intervals from his kind. He watched the lengthened evenings sink to sunsetting and the dawns open cold and sweet before the sun. He declared that Time was a being, and tried to explain to Auna that Time wearied at night-fall, slept by night and woke again invigorated with the dawn.
She humoured his imaginings and was always thankful when any subject outside himself could arrest his thoughts. But that was seldom. He suffered evil days and, when they came, Auna devoted herself to him and let all lesser duties mind themselves.
There came over Bullstone a long period of fruitless rage. Having for a season heaped contumely upon his own head and wondered why the people did not rise up and stone him; having subsequently mourned and become very silent through the passage of four weeks, his unsteady mind broke into a frenzy and his self-restraint failed, so that Auna shook in fear and Peter began to tell the people that his father was mad. But after a calenture, during which he cursed fate, flouted heaven, and uttered many profanities, which terrified Auna and pleased George Middleweek, Jacob grew calmer again and was almost childish for a season. He became more mild and humble, less envenomed against destiny.
People were sorry for Auna and Peter, but there seemed to be few to help them. Adam Winter, however, kept in touch with them, and William Marydrew often came to Red House on one pretext or another. He had declared from the first that Jacob would recover, so far as his brain was concerned. He knew Bullstone best and had the art to calm him quicklier than any other man was able to do. For Jacob felt William to be trustworthy and loyal. He often went to see him, and if any idea suddenly struck into the sufferer's thoughts, he would either convey it to William, or describe it to Auna. At this season his egotism was supreme and only at rare moments was he able to dismiss his projects, or himself, from the substance of speech.
A trivial thought took Jacob one day as he stood among his dogs, and he turned his back upon them, left Red House and, following the river, soon reached Mr. Marydrew's cottage.
"It's borne in on me that there are three sorts of men and only three, William," he said, standing before the ancient and looking down at him, where he sat smoking his pipe in his porch.