Not wedged in strict particularity,
But grasping all in her vast active spright;
Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy
pure light.”
—Henry More, 1642.
There was something indescribably desolate in the blank silence of the tiled house when Waghorn unlocked the door, and fumbled in the dusk for the tinder-box. No human being shared his dreary home, no animal kept him company or enlivened his solitary hours. It was undoubtedly owing to his loneliness that his tendency to gloomy fanaticism had, since his father’s death, so greatly increased. The one joy left him appeared to be this morbid and exaggerated desire to root out all that he deemed wrong, and to punish all those who withstood his fiery zeal.
Without pausing to eat or drink, he kindled his lantern and stole quickly out into the street. Early hours were kept in those days, and all seemed still in the village; stepping cautiously, he soon descried in the dust the prints of horse-hoofs, and was eagerly following them up to see whether they turned in at the Vicarage, when Zachary suddenly emerged from the gate.
“Good e’en to you, Waghorn,” said the clerk, in a more friendly tone than he usually employed towards the wood-carver. “Ha’ ye lost summat, that ye go groping like the woman that dropped her tenth bit o’ silver?”
“Ay,” said Waghorn, “that’s just what I have done, but I shall find what I seek yet, never fear.”
Zachary with apparent good nature swept his broad foot energetically to and fro among the dust, effectually wiping out all trace of the hoof-prints.