He mounted up to the box, and the stage- coach went away with him; while more slowly and soberly the little boat set its head homewards and pulled up through the driving rain.
It rained steadily, and all things soon owned the domination of the watery clouds.

The horses, the roads, the rocks, the stage-coach, and the two outsiders, who submitted for a long distance in like silence and quiet; though with the one it was the quiet of habit and with the other the quiet of necessity.
Or it might be of abstraction; for Winthrop's mind took little heed to the condition of his body.
It was busy with many greater things.

And among them the little word to which his sister's finger had pointed, lodged itself whether he would or no, and often when he would not.
Now NOW, -- "God NOW commandeth all men everywhere to repent." It was at the back of Winthrop's thoughts, wherever they might be; it hung over his mental landscape like the rain-cloud; he could look at nothing, as it were, but across the gentle shadows of that truth falling upon his conscience.

The rain- drops dimpled it into the water, when the road lay by the river-side; and the bare tree-stems they were passing, that said so much of the past and the future, said also quietly and soberly, "NOW." The very stage-coach reminded him he was on a journey to the end of which the stage-coach could not bring him, and for the end of which he had no plans nor no preparations made.

And the sweet images of home said, "_now_ -- make them." And yet all this, though true and real in his spirit, was so still and so softly defined, that, -- like the reflection of the hills in the smooth water of the river, -- he noted without noting, he saw without dwelling upon it.