The farmer's wife lay perfectly quiet. She felt chilly, but she begged the family to go to church; for the bells were just ringing.
Landolin went, and not without great self-satisfaction. To be sure, it was not a difficult matter to deceive his confiding wife; but Thoma had received a hit at the same time. She deserved it for her obstinate hard-heartedness; for of course she must know in what direction the praise of Peter led.
Thoma stayed with her mother, who prayed quietly.
Up the same road over which Landolin had passed the night after the celebration, now came, on this clear autumn Sunday, the judge's wife. A scoffer, who knew her thoughts, might have said to her: Not the intoxication of wine alone makes a man talk to himself, and changes his view of everything; and, worse still, the recovery from an over-indulgence in exciting thought is, perhaps, even bitterer.
This might have been said, and still the lady would not have stopped in her walk. Obeying a voice from within and not from without, she felt that she ought no longer delay in an effort to establish peace and quietness in Landolin's house, and peace between them and Cushion-Kate. She knew right well, for she had often enough experienced it, that a man sets little value on unsolicited help; yes, even frequently refuses it. But she also knew that her advice, even when repulsed, had had effect, and worked for good; and, above all things, she felt herself within the circle of the duties that spring from the union of man to man. As in war the wounded is no enemy, so in peace the sufferer is no stranger.
So the lady went up the hill. The church bells were ringing for the noon-day service; but in her ears rang the sound of a bell whose metal was not yet molten, and for which, who knows when a tower will be built!
The lady's thoughts by no means hovered in the so-called "higher regions"--quite the reverse. She thought of the nearest and most every-day subjects.
As she stood by the road, she saw a four-horse spring-wagon coming down the hill on a trot. A cow, grazing by the wayside, sprang, frightened, into the middle of the road, and ran along before the wagon, terrified, and with difficulty; at last the coachman rose in his seat, and hit her with his long whip, so that she turned aside, stood awhile, staring after the dust-enveloped monster with the four horses, and then went on grazing.