"Look," he said, pointing before them. They had come to the end of the shriveled rows, where a lane went by to the pastures on the northern headland. "This will help. See, this puddle of water here, where your cow's been drinking. It's full of her hoof-marks, and shallow, and dirty, and everything. Now stand over here."
Moving away, they leaned forward together and looked. The light so caught the little surface that the water was deep as the sky, and the clouds and the blue air were in it.
"There, you see. That's my life, before you, and since. I don't know how else"—
The girl was the first to speak again.
"I can't tell you so well," she said. "But the long winter evenings with the snow against the panes,—and the summer nights and no one to talk to,—there 'll be no more of those." Then she changed, happily mocking his sober face. "Parables in puddles,—and a preacher in blue overalls." They both laughed.
"I know," he confessed. "But I 've been through something that's made me preach
