She had borne him five children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life wearied her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister's wife; she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and her thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the spirit.
But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious depressing influences.

She felt that she was no longer to her husband what she had been to him, and felt it with something of self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true and tender wife.

Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought, but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking consciousness.
The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who came with such intent.

Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill, in great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous voice, who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two horns, or the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not settled to his mind in Scott's Commentary.

The minister was always very busy at such times, and made short work of his deacon's doubts.