While he sat there, with his aching forehead bowed in his hands, there came a light touch on his shoulder, and looking up he saw the Reverend Orlando Mullen, standing at his side like an embodiment of all the things from which he had fled. For an instant he could only stare blindly back at him. Then something which had opened in his soul, closed softly, as if it were a shell of custom, and he knew that he was again a prisoner. With the sight of that conventional figure, the scattered instincts of habit and of respectability—of all the qualities for which the race stood and against which the individual had rebelled—all these rallied anew to the battlefield from which they had been routed by his insurgent emotions.
"I suppose you're waiting, like myself, for the nine-forty-five train?"
"Yes, I'm waiting for the train."
"Business brought you so far away?"
"Yes, business brought me." Lifting his glass of beer, he drained it slowly under Mr. Mullen's friendly and curious eyes.
"It looks as if we should have a perfect day for the wedding," remarked the rector, after a pause. "Like you, I was called off on an urgent matter, but fortunately, it only means losing a little sleep."
Then the whistle of the train blew, and ten minutes later, Abel followed the young clergyman into the single coach and sat down in a vacant seat at his side.
It was two o'clock when at last he drove into the back gate at the mill, and unhitching his mare, turned her out into the pasture. As he crossed the road to the house, he lifted his eyes mechanically to the sky, and saw that the stars shone soft and near as if they were watching over a night of love.