For something unusual in the arrangements of the vehicle, or the occupants of it, was dimly yet surely to be discerned through the distance and the light, which was now turning brown rather than grey. Nothing could be seen clearly, and yet it came as no waggon load had gone from that door that evening. The minister took his hand from the gate, and Diana stepped forward, as the horses stopped in front of the lean-to; and a voice called out:

"Who's there to help? Hollo! Lend a hand."

The minister sprang down the road, followed by Diana. "What do you want help for?" he asked.

"There's been an accident – Jim Delamater's waggon – we found it overturned in the road; and here's Eliza, she hasn't spoke since. Have you got no more help?"

"Where's Jim?" asked Mrs. Starling, coming herself from the lean-to.

"Staid with his team; about all he was up to. Now then, – can we get her in? Where's Josiah?"

But no more masculine help could be mustered than what was already on hand. Brains, however, can do much to supplement muscular force. The minister had a settee out from the house in two minutes and by the side of the waggon; with management and care, though with much difficulty, the unconscious girl was lifted down and laid on the settee; and by the aid of the women carried straight into the lean-to, the door of which was the nearest. There, by the same energetic ordering, well seconded by Diana, a mattress was brought and laid on the long table, which Mrs. Starling's diligence had already cleared since supper; and there they placed the girl, who was perfectly helpless and motionless in their hands.

"There is life yet," said the minister, after an examination during which every one stood breathless around. "Loose everything she has on, Miss Diana; and let us have some hartshorn, Mrs. Starling, if you have got any. Well, brandy, then, and cold water; and I'll go for the doctor."

But Mr. Babbage represented that he must himself 'go on hum,' and would pass by the doctor's door; so if the minister would stay and help the women folks, it would be more advisable. Accordingly the farmer's waggon wheels were soon heard departing, and the little group in the lean-to kitchen were left alone. Too busy at first to think of it, they were trying eagerly every restorative and stimulant they could think of and command; but with little effect. A little, they thought; but consciousness had not returned to the injured girl, when they had done all they knew how to do, and tried everything within their reach. Hope began to fade towards despair; still they kept on with the use of their remedies. Mrs. Starling went and came between the room where they were and the stove, which stood in some outside shed, fetching bottles of hot water; I think, between whiles, she was washing up her cups and saucers; the other two, in the silence of her absences, could feel the strange, solemn contrasts which one must feel, and does, even in the midst of keener anxieties than those which beset the watchers there. The girl, a fair, rather pretty person, pleasant-tempered and generally liked, lay still and senseless on the table round which she and others a little while ago had been seated at supper. Very still the room was now, that had been full of voices; the smell of camphor and brandy was about; the table was wet in one great spot with the cold water which had been applied to the girl's face. And through the open door and windows came the stir of the sweet night air, and the sound of insects, and the gurgle of a brook that ran a few yards off; peaceful, free, glad, as if all were as it had been last night, or nature took no cognizance of human affairs. The minister had been very active and helpful; bringing wood and drawing water and making up the fire, as well as anybody, Mrs. Starling said afterwards; he had taken his part in the actual nursing, and better than anybody, Diana thought. Now the two stood silent and grave by the long table, while they still kept up the application of brandy to the face and heat to the extremities, and rubbing the hands and wrists of the patient.

"Did you know Miss Delamater well?" asked the minister.

"Yes – as I know nearly all the girls," Diana answered.

"Do you think she is ready for the change – if she must make it?"

Diana hesitated. "I never heard her speak on the subject," she said.

"She wasn't a member of the church."

Silence followed, and they were two grave faces still that bent over the table; but there was the difference between the shadow on a mountain lake where there is not a ripple, and the dark stir of troubled waters. Diana's eye every now and then glanced for an instant at the face of her companion; it was very grave, but the broad brow was as quiet as if all its questions were answered, and the mouth was sweet and at rest in its stillness. She wished he would speak again; there was something in him that provoked her curiosity. He did speak presently.

"This shows us what the meaning of life is," he said.

"No," said Diana, "it doesn't – to me. It is just a puzzle, and as much a puzzle here as ever. I don't see what the use of life is, or what we all live for; I don't see what it amounts to."

"What do you mean?" asked her companion, but not as if he were startled, and Diana went on.

"I shouldn't say so if people were always having a good time, and if they were just right and did just right. But they are not, Mr. Masters; you know they are not; even the best of them, that I see; and things like this are always happening, one way or another. If it isn't here, it is somewhere else; and if it isn't one time, it is another; and it is all confusion. I don't see what it all comes to."

"That is the thought of a moment of pain," said the minister.

"No, it is not," said Diana. "I think it often. I think it all the while. Now this very afternoon I was sitting at the door here, – you know what sort of a day it has been, Mr. Masters?"

"I know. Perfect. Just June."

"Well, I was looking at it, and feeling how lovely it was; everything perfect; and somehow all that perfection took a kind of sharp edge and hurt me. I was thinking why nothing in the world was like it, or agreed with it; nothing in human life, I mean. This afternoon, when the company was here and all the talk going on —that was like nothing out of doors all the while; and this is not like it."

There was a sigh, deep drawn, that came through the minister's lips; then he spoke cheerfully – "Ay, God's works have parted company somehow."

"Parted – ?" said Diana curiously.

"Yes. You remember surely that when he had made all things at first, he beheld them very good."

"Well, they are not very good now; not all of them."

"Whose fault is that?"

"I know," said Diana, "but that does not help me with my puzzle. Why does the world go on so? what is the use of my living, or anybody's? What does it amount to?"

"That's your lesson," the minister answered, with a quick glance from his calm eyes. Not a bit of sentiment or of speculative rhapsody there; but downright, cool common sense, with just a little bit of authority. Diana did not know exactly how to meet it; and before she had arranged her words, they heard wheels again, and then the doctor came in.

The doctor approved of what had been done, and aided in renewed application of the same remedies. After a time, these seemed at last successful; the girl revived; and the doctor, after administering a little tea and weak brandy and water, ordered that she should be kept quiet where she was, the room be darkened when daylight came on, the windows kept open, and handkerchiefs wet with cold water be laid on her head. And then he took his departure; and Diana went to communicate to her mother the orders he had left.

"Keep her there!" echoed Mrs. Starling. "In the lean-to! She'd be a deal better in her bed."

"We must make her bed there, mother."

"There! On the table do you mean? Diana Starling, you are a baby!"

"She mustn't be stirred, mother, he says."

"That's the very thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Starling. "She had ought to ha' been carried into one of the bed-chambers at the first; and I said so; and the new minister, he would have it all his own way."

"But she must have all the air she could, mother, you know."

"Air!" said Mrs. Starling. "Do you s'pose she would smother in one of the chambers, where many a one before her has laid, sick and well, and got along too? Air, indeed! The house ain't like a corked bottle, I guess."

"Not much," said Diana; "but Mr. Masters said, and the doctor says, that she cannot have too much air."

"O well! Eggs can't be beat too much, neither; but it don't follow you're to stand beating 'em for ever. I've no patience. Where am I going to do my ironing? I should like the minister for to tell me; – or get meals, or anything else? I don't see what possessed Josiah to go and see his folks to-night of all nights."

"We have not wanted him, mother, after all, that I see."

"I have wanted him," said Mrs. Starling. "If he had been home I needn't to have had queer help, and missed knowing who was head of the house. Well, go along and fix it, – you and the minister."

"But, mother, I want to get Eliza's things off, and to make her bed comfortably; and I can't do it without you."

"Well, get rid of the minister then, and I'll come. Him and me is too many in one house."

The minister would not leave the two women alone and go home, as Diana proposed to him; but he went to make his horse comfortable while they did the same for the sick girl. And then he took up his post just outside the door, in the moonlight which came fitfully through the elm branches; and he and Diana talked no more that night. He was watchful and helpful; for he kept up the fire in the stove, and once more brought wood when it was needed. Moonlight melted away at last into the dawn; cool clear outlines began to take place of the soft mystery of night shadows; then the warm glow from the east, behind the house, and the glint of the sunbeams on the tops of the hills and on the racks of cloud lying along the horizon. Diana still kept her place by the improvised bed, and the minister kept his just outside the door. Mrs. Starling began to prepare for breakfast; and finally Josiah, the man-of-all-work on the little farm, came from his excursion and from the barn, bringing the pails of milk. Then the minister fetched his horse, and came in to shake hands with Diana. He would not stay for breakfast. She watched him down to the gate, where he threw himself on his grey steed and went off at a smooth gallop, swift and steady, sitting as if he were more at home on a horse's back than anywhere else. Diana looked after him.

"Certainly," she thought, "that is unlike all the other ministers that ever came to Pleasant Valley."

"He's off, is he?" said Mrs. Starling as her daughter came in. "Now Diana, take notice; don't you go and take a fancy to this new man; because I won't favour it, nor have anything of the kind going on. I tell you beforehand."

"There is very little danger of his taking a fancy to me, mother."

"I don't know about that. He might do worse. But you couldn't; for I'll never have anything to say to you if you do."

"Why, mother?" inquired Diana in much surprise. "I should think you'd like him. I should think everybody would. Why don't you like him?"

"He's too masterful for me. Mind what I tell you, Diana."

"It's absurd, mother! Such a one as Mr. Masters never would think of such a one as I am. He's a very cultivated man, mother; and has been accustomed to very different society from what he'll find here. I don't seem to him what I seem to you."

"I hope not!" said Mrs. Starling, "for you seem to me a goose. Cultivated! Who is cultivated, if you are not? Weren't you a whole year at school in Boston? I guess my gentleman hasn't been to a better place. And warn't you for ever reading those musty old books, that make you out of kilter for all my world. If you don't fit his neither, I'm sorry. Society indeed! There's no better society than the folks of Pleasant Valley. Don't you go and set yourself up; nor him neither."

Diana knew better than to carry on the discussion.

Meanwhile the grey horse that bore the minister home kept up that long smooth gallop for a half mile or so, then slackened it to walk up a hill.

"That's a very remarkable girl," the minister was saying to himself; "with much more in her than she knows."

The gallop began again in a few minutes, and was unbroken till he got home. It was but a piece of a home. Mr. Masters had rooms in the house of Mrs. Persimmon, a poor widow living among the hills. The rooms were neat; that was all that could be said for them; little and dark and low, with bits of windows, and with the simplest of furnishing. The sitting-room was cheerful with books, however – as cheerful as books can make a room; and the minister did not look uncheerful, but very grave. If his brow was neither wrinkled nor lined, the quiet eyes beneath it were deep with thought. Mr. Masters' morning was spent on this wise.

First of all, for a good half hour, his knees were bent, and his thoughts, whatever they were, gave him work to do. That work done, the minister threw himself on his bed and slept, as quietly as he did everything else, for an hour or two more. Then he rose, shaved and dressed, took such breakfast as Mrs. Persimmon could give him; mounted his grey again, and was off to a house at some distance where there was a sick child, and another house where there dwelt an infirm old man. Between these two the hours were spent till he rode home to dinner.