“The thing already done! Thirty-five years spent for naught.”
Then he did up his packet again. But the tears dropped on it. This was to him a blow more crushing than he could bear.
He hoisted his parcel on his back, touched his forehead, but held the parson’s hand and wrung it, as speechlessly he left the house. His heart was too full for mere words.
The old man broke down rapidly after that. The object of his life was gone. The great ambition of his days was extinguished.
One day when he was being visited by the rector, as he lay on his death-bed, he said—
“Sir, I ha’ been thinking and worriting over my work o’ thirty-five years, and axing of myself whether it were all labour lost and time thrown away. It have fretted me terrible. But I seems to see now as it was not lost—not to me anyhow, for I got the Scriptur’ that into me that it became to me like the blood in my veins and the marrow in my bones—and it is my stand-by now.”