"Let me try to comfort you," he said.
******
When they came downstairs again, her face was calmer and her voice steadier. The coroner, a dapper man with a bright-red tie, was taking off his gloves and macintosh; the room was fast filling with silent figures, and the old grandmother was hobbling to and fro with noisy, excited importance.
"Will ye na' stay for t' inquest?"
Alec shook his head. "No, I can't stop now. I have a School-board meeting to go to. But I will come up this afternoon."
"Thank'ee, Mr. Burkett, God bless thee," said Mrs. Matheson.
He shook hands with the coroner, who was grumbling concerning the weather; then strode out back down the valley.
Though long since he had grown familiar with the aspects of suffering, that scene in the cottage, by reason of its very simplicity, had affected him strangely. His heart was full of slow sorrow for the woman's trouble, and the image of the child, lying beautiful in its death-sleep, passed and repassed in his mind.
By-and-bye, the moaning of the wind, the whirling of lost leaves, the inky shingle-beds that stained the fell-sides, inclined his thoughts to a listless brooding.
Life seemed dull, inevitable, draped in sombre, drifting shadows, like the valley-head. Yet in all good he saw the hand of God, a mysterious, invisible force, ever imperiously at work beneath the ravages of suffering and of sin.
It was close upon six o'clock when he reached home. He was drenched to the skin, and as he sat before the fire, dense clouds of steam rose from his mud-stained boots and trousers.
"Now, Mr. Burkett, jest ye gang and tak off them things, while I make yer tea. Ye'll catch yer death one of these days—I know ye will. I sometimes think ye haven't more sense thana boy,
