A BAG OF MEAL.


I often wonder what was the appearance of Saul's mother, when she walked
up the narrow aisle of the meeting-house and presented her boy's brow
for the mystic drops that sealed him with the name of Saul.

Saul isn't a common name. It is well,--for Saul is not an ordinary
man,--and--Saul is my husband.

We came in the cool of an evening upon the brink of the swift river that
flows past the village of Skylight.

The silence of a nearing experience brooded over my spirit; for Saul's
home was a vast unknown to me, and I fain would have delayed awhile its
coming.

I wonder if the primal motion of unknown powers, like electricity, for
instance, is spiral. Have you ever seen it winding out of a pair of
human eyes, knowing that every fresh coil was a spring of the soul, and
felt it fixing itself deeper and deeper in your own, until you knew that
you were held by it?

Perhaps not. I have: as when Saul turned to me in the cool of that
evening, and drew my eyes away, by the power I have spoken of, from the
West, where the orange of sunset was fading into twilight.

I have felt it otherwise. A horse was standing, surrounded by snow; the