Front matter (continued 4)

"'And he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God.'"

When the boy saw his sister take up a familiar-looking black book and begin turning the pages, his heart fell within him. He listened while she read of the compassionate act of love, then he covered his face with his hands and burst into tears.

"Oh, Margy, I didn't think you would--that's the Bible, Margy, the book mother used to read out of--the one Mr. Thorpe used to preach from--only the Bible, and I thought you meant it really, about the great doctor!"

"Only the Bible!" Margaret looked at the child and saw the disappointment in his face; and through him she seemed to see a great world of suffering people. This frail child, crippled, distorted, disappointed and faithless, seemed to her a symbol of the great suffering overwhelming the world, and his piteous cry an echo of the voice of the world: "Only the Bible!"

The whole world calling for power and turning dully from the great fountain-head of Power; crying for strength and ignoring that which constitutes all strength; desiring health and clasping close in their embrace the image of disease; pleading for light and joy and peace and turning their eyes resolutely away from the waiting angels standing ready to minister to them. "Only the Bible!"

Margaret knelt by the child's couch and put her arms about him.

"Little brother," she said, "little brother, let me tell you a story, as I used to do, Jamie.

"Once there was a great mine of gold, beautiful, shining gold, layer upon layer of it; and many men mined for it, and some dug in the ground, and a great many people worked day after day, some in one way and some in another, to find it. And many of the people disagreed about the best way to get at it. Some dug about the outer edges of the mine, and when they found a very few grains of gold they went away and told all the people that they had found all the gold there was; that they had explored the whole mine and knew all about it. Others did not dig deep enough to find the great golden layers, but they found a few glittering nuggets of the precious gold, and they went away and told all the people that they had gone to the bottom of the mine and had found all the gold there was there.

"Thousands and thousands of people went to the mine. Some found gold enough to satisfy them, others found only a few shining grains, and many went away disappointed. But the strange part of it was that all those who found any gold at all, even if it was only a tiny spark, believed they had found all there was.

"There were so many different opinions about it, and so many theories and beliefs, that after a time the people began to wonder whether there was really any gold in the mine at all. Some doubted and disbelieved, and a great many walked all about over the mine and had not faith enough to dig beneath the surface.

"Yet the gold was there, Jamie--it is there--a great mine of beautiful, shining gold. There is enough for everyone; yet few have obtained a supply sufficient for their own needs."

The story was finished and there was silence in the room. Then the thin little hand crept into Margaret's.

"Is that the way you think about the Bible, Margy?"

"Yes, Jamie. The Bible is a great mine of Truth; few, if any, have found the whole of it, and many, many have not found sufficient for their needs."

The boy's eyes were grave and serious; a grain of truth had been sown in fertile soil. Then after a time the blue-veined lids fluttered and closed and the boy fell asleep.

The spring opened early; the great drifts of snow yielded beneath the sun's warm rays and miniature rivulets and rills rushed and babbled down the hillside. Bare brown patches of earth showed here and there over the Flat, and unsightly piles of rubbish and debris were again laid bare; the mantle that had covered them melted and slipped away as though glad to be free.

The children of the Flat, long housed in close, cramped quarters, were hilarious at sight of the brown Mother Earth; and this great-hearted Mother to whom they turned instinctively never fails and never disappoints, but remains always heart to heart with the best in human nature. Poor waifs of children they were, unkept and ill-clad in spite of the efforts that had been made in their behalf.

There was no school on the Flat; the children who went to school climbed the long hill and went over into Edgerly and entered the ranks with the Edgerly fledglings. But many of these children never climbed the long hill, never saw the Christian city and never entered a schoolhouse.

Mrs. Thorpe had long felt that these children should be gathered together and instructed; now the conviction came to her that it must be done.

The fathers of these children wasted their substance in gambling houses and dens of vice, and their mothers eked out a wretched existence as best they could. Young men and women were walking in the footsteps of those who were lost in this wilderness, and the children were following on. Their scrawny limbs must reach out and grow to adult stature and their minds, already befogged by the uncleanliness that had been their portion from birth, were twining about the mean, demoralizing things that lead to destruction.

On the outskirts of the Flat where the Flat proper began to rise in undulations and low hills, from which could be seen stretches of field and upland, there stood an old, weather-beaten house. It was large and square and porches had once run the length of its sides. This old building had once been a summer hotel, or resort, as it was called. Vines that had been planted about it in those days now clambered about the partly fallen columns and endeavored, as Nature often endeavors, to hide from view unsightly blots and blemishes. There may be people who would cavil at using this building because of the various uses to which it had been put since the days of its freshness and popularity.

When the balance of interest became established on the Edgerly side, and the Resort fell off in the patronage of the better class of people, an unsavory fame came to attach itself to the place. We sometimes hear old tales of disembodied spirits who walk through halls and corridors and flit about apartments that they were wont to inhabit in the days of their flesh. But if the crime and suffering, the shame and woe that had existed beneath the roof of this crumbling old Resort had massed itself in one monster shape and walked the streets of the city over the hill, men and women would have cried out for a place to hide themselves, as did the Canaanites when the walls of Jericho fell down.

When gruesome stories regarding the place began to float about, when the scurry of rats and the rattling of blinds and the whistling of the wind through the crevices came to be known as the wailing and moaning of lost spirits, the place was deserted; and so it had stood for years, ruined and forsaken. But whoever might cavil at the building because of its infamous notoriety of the past, Mrs. Thorpe had no compunctions and no fears. She saw in the deserted rooms beneath the crumbling roof a place for the children, the neglected, untaught children of the Flat. Bit by bit a plan formed in her mind and grew from day to day until, full-fledged, but lacking yet in detail, she laid it before Margaret. And as though while she had been pondering the main plan, Margaret had been arranging the minor parts; now all the way seemed open before them.

The first step was to see the owner of the building and get his consent to use it for a school and kindergarten. The greater part of the Flat district was owned by a descendant of the first Bolton. This man in his younger days had cherished the old hope that the Flat would yet make a prosperous town. There is more money to be made from ownership of a prosperous, respectable town than from a disreputable Flat; but if he could not own a respectable town and make his money in a creditable manner there was but one thing left for him to do, and he put his foot squarely on his honor and did it. He saw that saloons and places of vice were erected to lure the sort of population that must people a wretched Flat.

Mrs. Thorpe called on this man at his business office in Edgerly. He regarded her keenly as she explained to him the use she wished to make of the old Resort.

"So you wish to open a school on the Flat?" he said. The expression on his face was inscrutable and his small eyes were so far sunk into the folds of flesh which surrounded them that it was difficult to know just where his gaze was directed.

"It is a long walk to the Edgerly school for the little children," she said, "and if they do not go when they are small it is difficult to get them started later."

"Exactly. I think I understand, Mrs. Thorpe." The small eyes, sunken in their folds of flesh, were looking for the future recruits for the saloons and places of vice, and the man's mind was busy with a fine calculation as to where they were coming from if these children were to be so taught as to make self-respecting citizens of them.

Sometimes we feel the atmosphere about us to be keen and rare, sometimes fragrant with the breath of flowers and the incense of morning dew; again we are aware that it is charged with a coming storm, or dark with impurities, or heavy with moisture. There are those who are as keenly sensitive to the mental atmosphere about them. Mrs. Thorpe felt strongly that unless her faith in the integrity of her purpose sustained her, her undertaking must fail before it had drawn the first full breath of life. She had stated her purpose and asked the favor and she felt little inclined to beg or plead for its fulfillment. Yet a battle was fought, keen and sharp. There was no flashing of swords nor pomp nor parade, neither were there words nor argument. It was the play of mind upon mind; penetrating, forceful. It was thought pitted against thought; right demanding its own. The small eyes shifted about uneasily and the man moved ponderously in his chair. When he spoke again his voice expressed his irritability.

"It is not my policy to let my buildings free of charge, Mrs. Thorpe. What consideration can you offer me for the use of this building?"

Mrs. Thorpe realized that she had not fallen into the hands of a philanthropist; she was fully aware that the man was not in sympathy with her plans. Without a moment's hesitation or a word of protest she drew from her purse the banknote that Mrs. Mayhew had pressed upon her, and handed it to him.

"How long may I have the use of the place for that amount?" she asked.

He held the money in his fingers as though testing its quality, and his eyes were fixed upon it, but the struggling soul within him was making him very uncomfortable. How merciless are the voices that contend in the soul of a man! These children of the Flat--was he in any way responsible for them? They were no better than so many rats in their holes--the houses that he provided were miserable holes--the wretched children--but why should he charge this woman rent for an old, deserted building set in a thicket of briars and brambles?

"You may have the building for the summer, if you like," he said aloud.

Mrs. Thorpe's eyes were upon him curiously. She could not tell how it happened, nor when, nor why, but she became aware that this pompous man of wealth had lost his air of condescension and self-conscious superiority.

"And now as I am paying you rent for this property," she said, "you will, I hope, make some needed repairs on the building and perhaps put the ground in a little better shape?"

The small eyes seemed to stand out from the enfolding flesh to look her full in the face. And that which they saw there aroused a smouldering spark of manhood. He turned to his desk and wrote rapidly for a few minutes. He handed her the paper. It was an order for whatever improvements she wished for both building and grounds.

"Present this to my business manager," he said, "and your bills will be paid."

Mrs. Thorpe arose at once and thanked him very sincerely.

"You are very kind," she said, "and I believe that you will never regret this day's work, liberal though it has been."

CHAPTER XVII

EVERY WHIT WHOLE

Poverty, poverty, the curse of the Flat--the curse of all on whom its blighting influence falls! We have been told that the love of money is the root of all evil. The misuse of money is the most atrocious thing in our civilization; but poverty is a devastating monster that crushes out the better nature of men as relentlessly as any monster of the jungle crushes its victim between its giant jaws.

Nature is prolific, lavish, luxurious; there is neither limit nor measure to her bounty and generosity. The ever-faithful Friend of man withered the fig tree because it failed to bring forth fruit. Everywhere over the wide earth we see provision made for the needs of men. Food, shelter and clothing the world does not lack. Nature's storehouses circle the globe, and they are never empty. Vast, measureless seedbeds, watered and warmed from Heaven, impelled by an unseen Power, are growing and producing the seasons through. Forests of fruit trees yielding their succulent, sweet-flavored fruit; oceans of grain fields, whose length and breadth the eye cannot measure--to feed the human race. Cotton, wool and hemp and the patient spinning of the silk-worm--to clothe the children of men; quarries of stone and forests of wood to provide shelter from sun and storm. Let us never, even in our weakest, most irreverent moments, voice a protest against the great and generous Giver of this boundless, countless wealth because of the disposition men have made of it.

Some day, that bright, blessed day that even now is dawning, men will not keep and hoard that for which they have no need, and for the lack of which a fellow man perishes and dies. When this day dawns no man will desire more of this world's goods than he can use and enjoy. Men will not seat themselves at a feast and stuff and feed until their bodies distend and their eyes start from their sockets while the wail of hungry children echoes in the land.

The monster, cruel, relentless, immovable, that Mrs. Thorpe found everywhere on the Flat was Poverty. This monster may spring from a gentle mother, more sinned against than sinning, but it is sired by Ignorance and the stamp upon its forehead is Vice.

Mrs. Thorpe visited in these poor, barren homes; she became acquainted with the people and was a friend to all, and with tact and patience she presented to them the desirability of the school that she was about to open.

The boys, profane, reared in immorality, knew her and in their boyish hearts admired her. When she called upon them and solicited their aid they responded readily, and devastating war was waged upon the briers and brambles that cumbered the soil around the old Resort. And while the ground that she planned for flower beds and vegetable gardens yielded up its unprofitable growth and was made ready for the plowman's steel the boys were receiving Nature's best discipline, the tug and sweat of honest work.

A workman skilled with tools, but who had abandoned his trade for the gambler's fortunes, was called upon and pressed into service to mend the broken roof and place again the crumbling columns. And when this work was finished the man, feeling again the spirit of manhood revived by honest work, went over into Edgerly and obtained steady employment; and his wife and children awoke to a new appreciation of life. The wife took a lot of the ground that lay back of the old Resort and vied with her neighbors in raising her beds of vegetables--tender lettuce, green peas and cucumbers.

As the summer wore on, the old Resort, robbed of its superstitions and the evil hold its uncanny tales had had upon the minds of the people, stood forth erect in the midst of cultivated grounds. The babble and chatter of children's voices echoed through it and exorcised the last remaining trace of evil that may have lingered there.

It had been somewhat difficult to induce the women whose children attended the school to plant and care for the garden lots, and their somewhat reluctant consent to do this was given more as a favor to Mrs. Thorpe than from any interest in the work. But he who cultivates Nature becomes interested in spite of himself. And as the brown seeds quickened and sent forth their little flame of life and developed into vigorous plants, each after its kind, the flame of Truth and Immortality in the hearts of the workers revived and grew and expanded.

The goddess Ceres vied with the Bacchus of the Flat and in a measure was the winner. In the cool of the summer evenings, when the day was slipping away and the earth prepared her bath of cooling dew, men, vicious-faced and with bloodshot eyes and unkept hair and beards, had been wont to take themselves to the dens of vice and quaff the cup in which the hissing serpent lurks; but now there was another attraction on the Flat. The owners of the garden lots would gather around the old Resort in the evenings to dig and weed and hoe, and the men fell into the way of strolling over to view the work of their wives' hands, and before the summer was over there was not a place on the Flat more popular than this. And sometimes a man whose heart was not all bad would take the rake and hoe and assist in the work. And then there were some whose memories took them back to boyhood days on the old farm, before the Evil One came with his false promises of pleasure.

Sometimes Mrs. Thorpe would induce the parents to come into the schoolroom and she would show them the work that their children were doing; and sometimes she would talk to the mothers about the care and management of their children and of their homes, and other subjects of interest; and then sometimes in passing their houses she would see that a window had been cleaned and a curtain, or perhaps a clean newspaper answering the place of a curtain, had been put up; or perhaps she would observe that some rubbish pile had been removed, or that a walk had been cleaned, and as she noticed these small improvements she felt that she had received her reward, and went on her way with strengthened purpose.

Mrs. McGowan so far recovered her health and her eyesight that she was able to take the greater share of the household cares upon herself, thus leaving Mrs. Thorpe and Margaret free to devote their time to the school. A strange school it was; there were no hard and fast rules; no one was compelled or commanded, but he who denies that love has power to rule denies because he has not love in his heart and is a stranger to its transfiguring power. It was, perhaps, more of a community of interest than a well-regulated school, but its influence was unmistakable.

Little children were amused and instructed and taught to be kind to each other. There were classes at regular hours that were given instruction from the standard text-books. Boys and girls who had never been to school and who were ashamed to go to Edgerly now, came here to learn to read and write. Girls brought their sewing and were given instruction in the art of cutting and making garments. Housewives were encouraged to come in and learn to cook. Daily it was impressed upon Mrs. Thorpe's mind that the harvest was ripe but the laborers were few. She did each day all that the limit of her strength allowed, but she carried no burdens and permitted herself no load of care. The work was hers, her heart and soul were in it; it strengthened her and put heart and zest into her life.

In the evening after her day's work was done she often spent an hour with Jamie, teaching and amusing him. She felt strangely drawn to the unfortunate child, and often talked to him about her work and related to him any pleasing incident that occurred during the day.

The boy had never attempted to walk, had never stood upon his feet. Dr. Eldrige Jr. had taken a special interest in him and had done much toward removing his physical deformity and freeing him from pain. He still had hopes that continued treatment would enable him to walk, but all his efforts to get him on his feet had so far proved futile.

Mrs. Thorpe was sitting in the gloaming one evening talking to the boy. He sat in his invalid's chair facing a flaming, fire-like cloud, the trailing garment of the setting sun.

"Please sing for me to-night, Mrs. Thorpe," he said. "I love to hear you sing while I sit here and watch the glory cloud fade out of the sky."

Mrs. Thorpe went to the piano that had been hers from the days of her girlhood and let her hands wander over the keys, recalling snatches of song and old, half-forgotten melodies.

Mrs. McGowan came into the room and seated herself in the easy chair that had been set apart for her. She leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes, and a sense of peace and blessing welled up in her heart. She had seen many hard places in life and their influence had lingered with her. But to-night she had a peculiar feeling as of all her cares rolling from her and only that which was glad and good remained, and her spirit seemed light and free as in the days of her young womanhood, before care and trouble called her.

Mrs. Thorpe ceased the desultory snatches of song and melody and, turning the leaves of her song-book, she came to a song especially dear to her. Her voice was sweet and low, and when she sang her soul poured forth the joy of her spirit, and all that stood between her and her heart's happiness seemed to recede and slip away from her.

The low, sweet strains of the instrument rose and fell in pleasing cadence, and the tender, pleading voice floated out on the soft evening air.

Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,

When the tired waketh, and the shadows flee,

Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight,

Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee.

The words came to Mrs. McGowan like a confirmation of that which her heart had felt, and she seemed to feel the ever presence of infinite Love. An intensity of feeling swept over her, an ecstasy of peace and joy that seemed almost pain, so sure and keen it was. She did not move nor stir; she felt that she scarcely breathed.

Margaret, looking at her mother, saw the glory of the sunset reflected on her quiet face. How peaceful and quiet it was; how strangely still, as though it was the glory divine that rested there.

With an indescribable feeling in her heart, half worship, half wonder, she turned instinctively to Jamie and saw that his eyes had left the flaming west and were fixed upon Mrs. Thorpe's face. His lips were parted, his eyes aglow, his thin, white face eager with unspoken desire, and--was it the sunset that touched his yellow curls, transforming them into a crown of light?

Alone with Thee, amid the seeming shadows,

The solemn hush of being newly born,

Alone with Thee, in breathless adoration,

In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.

Margaret, watching the boy, felt her awe and wonder growing upon her. His slight body inclined forward as though in waiting expectation. A warm glow had come to his cheeks and there was a strange light in his eyes.

And still the low, sweet words flowed on.

So shall it ever be in that bright morning,

When Divine sense bids ev'ry shadow flee,

And in that hour fairer than daylight dawning,

Remains the glorious thought I am with Thee.

Quietly, without seeming effort, the boy slid from his chair and, steadily, erect, he crossed the room and stood by Mrs. Thorpe's side. The red glory encircled him and the pleading melody seemed to fold him about, hold and sustain him.

Margaret, as though fearful that she was looking upon something too sacred for mortal vision, covered her face with her hands and a quivering sob fell from her lips.

Mrs. McGowan sat erect, and instantly her eyes sought the boy's chair; she arose in consternation. Then in the waning red light she saw him standing by Mrs. Thorpe's side. A great trembling seized her; but amid her confusion of thought, before words came to her, she was conscious that a prescience of this thing that had happened had been with her since she first came into the room.

"Jamie!" she cried, "oh, Jamie, Jamie!" She was by his side, her arms about him. "My child, my child! That I have lived to see the goodness of the Lord! That I have lived to see this blessed day!"

The song had ended, and with a quivering note the music ceased. Mrs. Thorpe turned and confronted the mother and child and at once comprehended the meaning of what she saw.

"Christ is the Healer Divine!" she cried, and she kissed the boy's white brow and clustering curls.

Margaret knelt beside them, and her tears flowed unrestrained. "Little brother, little brother!" she said, "cured by the great Physician!"

The boy threw his arms about her neck. "I can walk, Margy, I can walk! But why do you cry, Margy?--mother, Mrs. Thorpe--you are not surprised--you believed--the Lord has promised--don't you know? And I believed--I truly did believe!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HEART'S DESIRE

At the approach of cold weather Mrs. Thorpe was obliged to close the school, but she and Margaret worked among the people during the winter and were rewarded by the fact that there was less suffering and sickness than there had been the year before.

Some of the older boys and girls came to Mrs. Thorpe's cottage for instruction, and prepared to enter the Edgerly school in the spring. The classes in sewing and cooking were also continued, although necessarily on a reduced scale.

In the spring when the school was again opened there was no difficulty in arousing interest and enthusiasm. The garden lots were in great demand, and the children begged for a corner for flowers. The vines that had been cared for and trained the year before now climbed about the posts and columns and transformed the old Resort into a mass of greenery and rioting bloom.

The sweet summer days drew on with golden sunshine and lavish promise, and the Flat received something of Nature's benediction. Throughout the summer Mrs. Thorpe and Margaret continued their work. Day by day they bound the sheaves; day by day they saw dear smiles break on childish faces and light dawn where darkness had reigned before.

Yet there were times when the magnitude of the work arose before Mrs. Thorpe and appeared to her like a Red sea in her path. The ignorance and immorality, the poverty and the want, the small, poorly built homes and lack of order and law massed themselves into a rolling sea which she could see no way around and no way through unless the Lord of Hosts should cleave the waters for her. But with characteristic faith she resolved that should the command ever come to her "To lift up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea and divide it," she would be ready to obey. And for her there was consolation in the thought that her work had come to her with no uncertain appeal; she had sought it and it had found her. She loved it with her heart and soul, this work of hers, and stripped of its gruesome exterior, beneath the sackcloth of poverty and misfortune, the loving, throbbing heart of it responded to her.

The long summer days slipped by and the frost of autumn was again in the air. Red and yellow leaves fluttered down from the trees, sported with the winds, and lay in garlands along the streets and pathways. Mrs. Thorpe and Margaret left the school together at the close of one blue, balmy day; but at the gate they parted.

"I shall not go directly home," Margaret said. "I am going for a walk, over to Cedar Brook, perhaps; I shall be back before dark."

"Very well, my dear," Mrs. Thorpe replied. "The walk will do you good, no doubt." She stood for a minute at the gate and watched the retreating figure. Many times of late she had seen the fire of the girl's spirit leap into the dark eyes; and all that day her heart had ached at the sight of the restless pain in the thin, dark face. Was the turbulent nature warring again?--the restlessness of her spirit not yet subdued?

"Keep my girl, dear God, keep my girl," she murmured, as she turned in at the gate. "Keep my dear, dear girl."

A man, gaunt and worn, with signs of recent illness upon his face, stepped out of one of the prosperous-looking, well-kept homes of Edgerly. His step was not so elastic as it once had been, but the face had lost none of its alertness, nor the eyes their keenness. He passed the Mayhew house; how familiar it looked. Not a tree or shrub seemed changed; he noticed the sweet-brier by the library window, and in fancy he could hear it tapping against the window-pane. Farther out he passed the home of Dr. Eldrige and saw the old doctor in an invalid's chair on the porch. He had heard the harrowing story of the old man's affliction, also some gruesome reports concerning it. That blood and froth oozed from his nostrils and mouth during his attacks, which contained a virus that poisoned all flesh that came in contact with it was supposed to be a fact; but that this poison exuded continually from his body was believed by most people to be an exaggeration of the case.

The next house was the home of Dr. Eldrige Jr. This was a cottage less pretentious than the house where the old doctor lived; but there were shrubs and flowers in the yard; the grass was well kept and vines grew over the door. A woman, partly screened by the greenery, was sitting on the porch rocking back and forth in a wicker chair, a woman with golden hair coiled about her head and soft, clustering curls about her face. And tenderly in her arms she was cradling a wee bit of a rosy child. Perhaps she was crooning a lullaby; the little one put out his hand, a little roseleaf hand, and the mother bent her head and laid her lips upon it.

The man, in passing, saw the mother and child, and his face lighted with a smile. During his absence his friends had kept him informed about the happenings at home. He knew that the woman with the crown of golden hair was married; his sister had written him about it at the time, and he remembered now that the news had brought him no sadness and no regret, but that in his heart he had been glad that it was so. And as he went on his way his thoughts went back to that far-away foreign land, to an island of the sea where he had been when this letter of his sister's reached him. For weeks he, with his regiment, had been in the deep heart of a forest and sometimes there were marshes to cross and streams to ford and their beds at night was the damp, black ground. In fancy it all came back to him now: the dusky natives with their scant raiment; the towering forests with their weird majesty, and the call and cry of the wild creatures that inhabited them; the smell of the reeking mould, where year after year the decaying mass of vegetation had not been disturbed; the reedy marshes where all through the lonesome nights the wind sighed and moaned in the long marsh grass.

And there in that sun-kissed, tropical land, where the stars came out at night, calm and familiar as in his native land, as he stretched his weary limbs on his blanket for his night's repose, sometimes a cool hand would be laid on his brow and a sense of peace and rest would steal over him, and then, sometimes, in the mist and clinging darkness a face would appear before his vision, and it was not the fair face of the woman with the shining golden hair, but a dark, slender face with great, dark eyes burning into his soul; pain and pleading and the anguish of a woman's heart were written there. And once on a misty night, when the darkness was thick and heavy with moisture and all the moaning forest was dripping wet, a white circle was outlined in the blackness and a slight, supple form glided close to him and knelt beside him in the mist and dripping rain; the thin fingers that he remembered so well were clasped in anguish and the face was wet as the dripping foliage about him--wet with a woman's tears. All the heart within him rose in anguish to meet her, and he would have given his life and soul to take her in his arms and soothe the remorse and despair from her anguished face; but when he put out his hand to touch her, a great fear came over her and she recoiled from him and shrank and shuddered in the darkness and was gone.

"Margaret!" he cried, and his heart broke within him--"Margaret!" The cry sounded dully through the heavy silence and a comrade partly awoke and asked him why he was moaning and calling in the night.

The man, with his thoughts still partly in the past and partly on the familiar objects about him, passed on through the streets of Edgerly and slowly, as one who toils, he climbed the incline up to the church. He seated himself on the church steps to rest for a time, and then perhaps he would go back--or perhaps--but his thoughts again became reminiscent; the spirit of the past was with him. His mind went over the long weeks spent in the hospital, where the doctors had pronounced his case hopeless and the nurses believed that he must die. Long, weary days he had lain on his bed of pain, and in his heart waged open rebellion against the power that held him there; then for many, many days he lay, too weak to struggle, too helpless to care. Down into the dark valley where the air was damp and dank, where gruesome things, weird and fantastic, glided noiselessly among the shadows--shadows ever growing deeper, darker, closer--down in the dark valley he left the last remnant of his vaunted power and felt himself a child--just a child--with the Everlasting Arms, the abiding, sustaining force of the universe, about him. And like a gnarled and cankered plant that the gardener cuts to the root that it may put forth a more vigorous and healthful growth, little by little he came again into the sunshine, and a new heaven and a new earth opened before him.

The great purpose of God is absolute in the universe; it reaches out, covers and enfolds the purposes of man as the shades of night cover and enfold the earth at eventide. All the struggling, sin-tossed creatures of earth are folded tenderly close to the great heart of God; yet our vain imaginings and foolish desires often take us a long and weary way, over mountains and vale and sea, before we lift up our eyes and know that God is love. When passion has burned itself out, when lust is dead, when the human is crucified and laid in the grave to rise again divine; when all the mocking demons of false belief and evil thought are rebuked and sent cowering from before our consciousness, then the soul comes into its own and the Kingdom of Heaven is ours.

Margaret was seated on a ledge of rock by the brook. Her eyes were strained far off to the dim blue hills in the distance; her heart was torn with restless pain, and her life's hunger was in her face, but her soul was anchored safe and secure.

"Expiation!" she murmured. "Dear God, only keep me from day to day--keep me--keep your child." Softly over her memory floated a fragment of the words that Mrs. Thorpe had read that morning: "He that keeps thee will not slumber."

The brook babbled at her feet and the curious droning voices of the woodland came to her. Every sense was alive; the wild seclusion of the place appealed to the turbulent passion within her, its peace and beauty enthralled her.

"Give unto me the strength of the towering forest pines," she whispered, "the humility of the woodland flowers, the steadfastness of the mist-hung hills."

A squirrel, intent upon his winter's store, was making little journeys from an acorn-filled treetop to his home at the tree's gnarled root; from the woods came the muffled drumming of a partridge. The call of a bird-note, faint in the distance, the nearby chirp of a cricket and the whispering of the wind in the treetops mingled with the low, vague sounds of the forest and blended into a symphony soft and sweet, then weird and haunting, as the falling of a leaf or the snapping of a twig broke the harmony.

The girl, with her eyes on the far-away hills, was bound by the spell of it all; yet to her finer sense there was wafted from the soft, thrilling melody and the fluttering breath of the forest a knowledge, vague, evanescent, yet so quickening and compelling that the past, the future, the present--life itself--trembled before it. A shower of leaves scattered by the provident squirrel fell at her feet; a twig snapped sharply and there was a rustling sound in the path beside her. But she did not move nor stir, and her eyes did not leave the hilltops--but she knew--she could not fail to know his presence, and when he came to her side, and stood close beside her, she shrank and shuddered, and yet her heart cried out with the exquisite pain of it.

"Margaret," he said, "Margaret, I have come over land and across seas. Have you no welcome for me? No word nor look?"

He had left the church and passed through the crooked, unkept street of the Flat and on past the old Resort out to Cedar Brook. Exhausted with his long walk, he seated himself on the ledge of rock. Margaret sank down on the soft, clinging moss beside the rock and buried her face in her hands.

"Have you no word for me, Margaret? After all this time, not one word for me?" But he did not touch her; he dared not lay his hand on her. And she made no reply nor raised her face to his until she had gained complete control of herself; then she arose and stood before him.

He had heard of her reformation; he expected to find her changed, but he was not prepared for that which had had its birth and growth since he last saw her; and in this first moment of their meeting no other characteristic seemed so patent to him. He regarded her in silence. Here was the girl that he had known, the passionate, turbulent Margaret, but blended with her, permeating her personality, guarding and protecting her, was this other self--the ideal enshrined in his heart. Whence had she obtained this unnamable quality which, unvoiced and without conscious effort, aroused the reverence in his manhood? Always before he had controlled her, dominated her, often against her will by his superior force; now her personality, her selfhood stood out before him, silent yet indomitable, subtle, intangible, yet absolute. Reverently he extended his hand to her, and his voice was deep with pleading.

"Margaret, speak to me, all unworthy though I am to hear your voice--trust me, though I did so abuse your girlish trust--forgive me, forgive me and let me prove myself to you."

She took his proffered hand and looked unfalteringly into his eyes.

"You should not take all the blame," she said. "I, too, need to be forgiven."

He held her hand between his palms, then raised it to his lips.

"Margaret," he said, "you are the only woman I have ever loved."

"Max!" The word fell from her lips like a sob. "Max!"

He drew her to him and kissed the dark hair where it lay smooth against her forehead.

"Will you be my wife, Margaret, my loved and honored wife?"

Her eyes scanned his face; not a line of pain, not a mark of suffering escaped her. All his struggles, his rebellion, his victories, and all the soul within him lay bare before her deep-seeing eyes. She laid her hand on his face, that dear face so intense and strong, and wondered keenly in how many ages, how many worlds, how many lives, she had known him.

The squirrel, disturbed by their presence, stopped midway on the tree trunk and chattered noisily; again the drumming of the partridge and the woodland voices blended, now rich and full in a glad song of triumph, praise, victory.

CHAPTER XIX

"WHERE IS YOUR FAITH?"

Max and Margaret were quietly married in Mrs. Thorpe's little parlor. They made their home in a comfortable, roomy cottage which Max erected on the outskirts of the Flat not far from the old Resort.

Now, as never before, Max devoted himself to his business affairs and took stock of the amount of his wealth. He was part owner of a manufacturing plant in Edgerly, and before the year was out he had sold his interest and announced his intention of building a factory on the Flat. From the man Bolton he obtained possession of the Flat district. To tear down the old, decaying buildings, to clear the ground of rubbish and lay off straight, square lots and build comfortable cottages was no small task; but all this was accomplished while the new factory was building. In planning and executing this great amount of work Max found Mrs. Thorpe's counsel and advice invaluable. There were many interests to be considered and some obstacles to be overcome, and her knowledge of the work and acquaintance with the people helped him to plan wisely and to use judgment and discretion in his work.

He called at the school for Margaret one evening at the close of her day's work, and lingered for a talk with Mrs. Thorpe.

"I think we shall be able to have a regular school here another year," he said.

"I am sure all good things will come to the people here in time," she said. "What a world ours would be if every such place as this Flat had such a friend as you, Max."

"The work is yours, Mrs. Thorpe; you must know that it is all yours," he replied; and then after a moment's silence he continued: "There are emotions that words seem to degrade, this is why I have never attempted to put into words my admiration for what you have done for the people on this Flat, nor my gratitude for what you have done for me. But, after all, it is not protestations, desires nor words, but the way he lives his life that proves a man. My work among these people, my life devoted to the alleviation of needy humanity, these must be my spokesmen, to you first, Mrs. Thorpe, and to my fellow men; these must testify to the transformation of the man, and stand as a monument to his faith, a thank-offering to his God."

Mrs. Thorpe checked the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes. Years before she had believed that it was service that was demanded of her, and she had besought the Lord that she might see the fruit of her endeavor, the harvest of her labor; that a visible sign might be given her. Dare she doubt that her prayer was answered, or hesitate to recognize the answer? Dare she turn her eyes from this Infinite love, or escape this deluge of blessing, even though it overwhelmed and overpowered her? She thought of the children of Israel, how they had besought Moses to veil his face after he had talked with God. Was she, too, unable to bear the brightness of the light? Must she beseech the Lord to again draw the veil between her and His kingdom that the ecstasy of answered prayer might not become too great for her soul to bear?

Margaret, who had been assisting a girl who had lingered over her task, now crossed the room and joined them.

"Come with us to tea, Mrs. Thorpe," she urged. "We love to have you with us. Mother and Jamie will expect you to-night, I am sure."

"Yes, come with us, sister," added Max. "We are always wishing for your presence in our home."

"Very well," Mrs. Thorpe replied, "your hospitality is sweet to me."

After the evening meal was over they sat out on the broad cottage porch and discussed various aspects of their work. From adjoining cottages could be heard the chatter and laughter of children's voices. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers; the sun was nearing the horizon and its radiance lay over the Flat, no longer the unlovely Flat, but a collection of comfortable homes whose inmates, sure of employment and, more than this, sure of justice and equity, had in a measure fallen into harmony with the forces that make for righteousness.

The air of peace and quiet that had fallen over the little group on the porch was broken by the arrival of a carriage at the gate. Dr. Eldrige assisted his wife to alight, and Margaret and Max went down the walk to meet them. There was cordial frankness in their greeting, sincere and whole-hearted. As they neared the steps Mrs. Thorpe came forward, and after greeting Geraldine, stooped and put her arms about the child; he put his chubby arms close about her neck and laid his soft, pink cheek against her face. How dear to her heart was the love of this child!

The two men walked leisurely up to the house; Geraldine, in a simple white gown that caused her face with the golden hair above it to appear like the petals of some rare-tinted flower, stood against the dark outline of vines that screened the porch. All that her girlhood promised had blossomed into womanhood; maternity had developed all that was best and noblest in her.

From a nearby cottage a ripple of childish laughter floated out on the evening air. Geraldine turned to her companions.

"Does earth contain sweeter music than the laugh of a child?" she said. "I often think that the transformation of this Flat is more wonderful than any of the fairy tales that enchanted our childhood."

"It is a demonstration of the brotherhood of man, almost beyond belief," Dr. Eldrige replied.

"To do what lies before us, just that which comes to our hand to do, to be true to the best within us, is not so remarkable a thing to do," Max replied, and his eyes met Geraldine's honestly. "It is in the results that the wonder lies."

After a time the two men fell into a discussion of ways and means concerning both the health and morals of the laborers on the Flat, and Margaret took Geraldine to see her garden. Mrs. Thorpe accompanied them, and Mrs. McGowan and Jamie joined them. The child, with Jamie for an escort, played about the garden paths and filled his hands with flowers, and Margaret and her companions made themselves comfortable on a rustic garden seat.

Margaret had a gift of understanding that made it possible for her to read her husband's wishes and to know his needs; now she knew that he would join them, unless for some reason he wished to be alone with his friend. The loyal friendship of Dr. Eldrige Jr., freely given, had, she knew, been meat and drink to Max, and had been invaluable to him in his work.

After the matter concerning the work on the Flat was disposed of, the two men continued their talk.

"Old Edgerly is still in throes of incredulity over your operations on this side of the hill, Max," the doctor said.

"Yes, I have heard her groanings from afar; queer why the old town should suffer so!"

"Yes, it is strange; father has been roaring like a lion, but he has taken to silence, absolute silence!"

Max smiled at thought of the stormy old man reduced to silence.

"I had not supposed it was so bad as that," he said.

There was the best of comradeship between the two men, although little had been said concerning the past. Events had run their course in such a manner that Dr. Eldrige Jr. felt that he had no grievance to cherish; and however slow one might be to accept the reformation in Max Morrison's character, the transformation in his life and work was patent to all.

Max leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head.

"It's a queer world we live in, doctor," he said, "a queer old world."

Dr. Eldrige Jr. regarded him in silence; he was not quite sure of Max's attitude toward conditions, as he had found them since his return to his native land, and he had no desire to probe an old wound nor to inflict a new one. And, at best, Dr. Eldrige was a man of few words.

"I used to live over in Edgerly," Max continued, ignoring the doctor's silence, "over in Christian Edgerly. I had, I think, the heart of a man in me, yet I was a villain--you know what I was--I ought to have been shot, shot like a cur--yet Edgerly favored me, sought and pampered me. But now that I have put my hand to an honest work--to help the needy, to feed and clothe the poor--the good old town has at least every other day a new motive, each more sinister than the other, to impute to my actions." He sprang to his feet and walked the length of the porch and back. "Eldrige," he said, "I had thought never to impose on your friendship by bringing up the past; but I feel to-night as though I may break my good resolutions."

"Do not be afraid of imposing on my friendship, Max; speak of the past as freely as you like. You know me--we know each other."

"You know my temperament, Eldrige; I have always been a devil of a fellow when aroused; and the attitude of those good people over there beyond the hill arouses me a bit. There is a little woman here on the Flat that chides me for this attitude, and tells me that I am wasting good strength fighting windmills. But I have not arrived at a place where I can view other people's unaccountable conduct and shortcomings in the calm, unruffled manner in which Mrs. Thorpe views them."

"I find no difficulty in seeing Mrs. Thorpe's viewpoint, Max. She proves by her daily life and work that she is a follower of the one perfect Man; she heals the sick and reforms the sinner through her understanding of the Divine Law. This, to me, seems simple and natural, and she allows nothing to fret or trouble her. But I am going to be perfectly frank with you, and tell you that I cannot so readily understand your attitude. I think I have never deluded myself into believing that I understand you, Max; a man who has it in him to do the work that you are doing here on this Flat, aroused by adverse criticism--why man--"

"There, Eldrige, stop, please! I thought you understood me better than that. Why, man, criticism tones me up--puts me in good working order; antagonism exhilarates me, persecution inspires me. But what of those who criticise, antagonize and persecute? There's the rub--that's what arouses me. Why should professing Christian people hold up their hands and shout themselves hoarse because some fellow does an act of kindness to his fellow men? It's not criticism that I care for, but it does arouse the very devil in me to see Christian people stand in wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment before a Christian deed. You see, I have not the religion that Mrs. Thorpe has; in fact, I am not at all sure that I have any religion whatever. I think it possible, and I may say that I really hope it possible that I may some day come into the scientific understanding of life that Mrs. Thorpe has attained; but at present I am trying only to do the square thing by my fellow men."

The doctor looked him over deliberately.

"If ever I am able to understand the man you are, Max, I think it will be when I am a better man myself than I am now. You may not call yourself a religious man, but there is a force back of your life, a force of some kind that I did not know that the universe contained; there is some secret here that I have not been able to find out."

"I don't agree with you there, Eldrige; there's no secret about it, there's nothing hidden nor concealed; all is open and clear as the sun in mid-heaven. The trouble is our eyes are holden, we are blind and dumb and dead--I wish I could make you see things from my viewpoint--there are a thousand things I would tell you if I could."

Max was not looking at the doctor now; his eyes were far away upon the distant horizon. "I would tell you something of the influence of my early bringing up," he said, "a pampered child of wealth; something of the force of Christianity, as it was taught and lived in my home; something of the time when I passed from boyhood to manhood, idle, with more money than I could spend--honestly; something of the day when I first looked into the eyes of the woman I love--innocent, beseeching--"

He arose again and walked back and forth across the porch.

"I can't do it, Eldrige--I've no words to make you understand," he said, "you who have lived a clean life, you who have always worked--" He drew his chair up near to the doctor and sat down again. "I really think," he said, in a quieter tone, "that during that period of my life I was not so much bad as blind and dead--the man in me had never been born; I was a clod, a lump of clay, with the instincts of the beast. Our civilization! Our Christianity!--Damn!--I'll try not to be profane, doctor. But this is why I say I am not a religious man; I tell you I had as soon trust the chances of the brownest skinned, dumb beast of a man that I knew on those far islands of the sea as the chances of the son of the average wealthy Christian parents in this Christian land.

"I am not going to be profane, not if I can help it, and I am not going to allow myself to become unduly excited, but the rashest language that our vocabulary contains could not portray the fires of hell that burned within me when I left my native land, beaten and broken. I was furious--furious because I had missed the heart and center of life--why should I have missed it? I desired the beautiful, satisfying things of life; I had the base and unclean; and I was furious with myself, my family, society--the whole world."

There was silence for a few moments. The doctor said nothing; then Max spoke again: "I know, Eldrige, and you know, that the truth and purity in your wife's heart was the whip and scourge that drove me to my manhood."

The doctor extended his hand, and met Max's hand in a firm, keen clasp.

"When I found that truth and purity, uprightness and a clean soul are the real gems of life, the beautiful things, the lasting and abiding and satisfying things, I wanted them for myself," Max continued, "and no fires of hell can ever burn and sear as did the belief that I had lost them irrevocably; that through the conduct that my family had ignored and society had condoned I had with my own hand shut myself off from them forever. I think my indignation was directed not so much at myself as at the civilized world, the society, church, and family that had offered no resistance and put no check on my journey to perdition. But when I came back to my native land I had had some experiences that made another man of me. When a man goes down into the valley and stands on the border he sees things with a clearer vision. I had no desire then to shift the responsibility of my misspent life upon either people or institutions. I think I saw more clearly, perhaps, than I had before the faults and weaknesses in our institutions, and the lack of moral stamina in those who take upon themselves the training of the young; but these were not the things that counted with me then, not the things I cared about. No, I tell you I was face to face with my own soul then, and nothing else counted! The inexorability of it! There was no way to escape, no way to shift or turn, no excuses, no deceits, no subterfuges. Absolute, immovable Justice is the most grim-faced thing that a man can meet. It was not until after I had met this grim fellow, and laid my black life bare before him, asking nothing, deserving nothing, that any peace came to me. But after this I knew--I cannot tell you how I knew--but the knowledge came to me that over this sinning and suffering life there lies the great Life, tender, compassionate Love.

"When I came back to this Flat and found Margaret, and looked into her face, and saw the transformation there, then I knew that there is a God, and to know this, that there is a God, is to know that the whole duty, pleasure and profit of man is to serve Him by serving his fellow men, and this, without any meeting-house religion whatever, is what I have been trying to do.

"My mother and sister go every Sunday and worship in the beautiful church yonder on the hill. They have never recognized my wife, although my mother knows, as God knows, that the guilt was mine more than it was Margaret's. My mother is a Christian woman, according to accepted standards, and far be it from me to reproach or judge her, but the son that she reared had a long way to go and a hard battle to fight before he could see and know the purity of an honest love, the dignity of a human soul, whether it be in a high place or a lowly one. I have come to the conclusion that what we call the Christian world has in its social code and accepted standards of respectability a law of its own, the spirit of which never sprang from inspiration; a law that binds and holds absolutely, as the letter of the old Jewish law held the priests and scribes who cried 'Crucify, crucify the Truth unless it comes in the style and manner that we have marked out for its coming.' The simple, undressed truth is ignored, put aside and kept in the background; the so-called church of Christ keeps it there.

"You know, Eldrige, and I know, and every man in the world to-day knows, that there is something wrong, radically wrong, deep-seated and to the heart's core, with our church, society and home training when a man and woman, reared you might say, in the very shadow of the church, and having its precepts hurled at them from their infancy, yet can mistake passion, immorality and shame for the joy and pleasure of life; when to their young lives the hell-brewed poison of destruction appears like the rich, red wine of satisfaction.

"For what does the church over there on the hill stand? What is its mission? its object? its meaning? If there is anything in the power of the Son of Man there is everything--everything or nothing; and this attitude of people who call themselves Christians, standing between suffering, sin-sick mortals and the sinner's God is enough to make the angels weep--and mortals howl!"

"Well, well, Max, I believe you are aroused a bit; but I am afraid, my man, that you are probing to the heart and center of conditions that will never be righted in this world. Eternity alone, I think, will reveal the why and wherefore of some of the things that are troubling you."

"No, Eldrige, it will not require the revelations of eternity to convince me why the Church is cankered, worm-eaten and corrupt. I verily believe I can give you the reason this minute: it is because its advocates are hearers of the Truth, but not followers of it. Over there in Christian Edgerly men and women profess to follow Christ, and in their hearts they know that they stop with the professing. Not one man in ten will read the words of Christ and admit that they can be taken as a rule of life and conduct.

"'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so to them.'

"Where is the man who does this? The poor, the needy, the suffering, the down-trodden, the unfortunate, they circle the globe, they are in every land, every clime, every city, town and hamlet; the voice of their cries by day and their groanings by night is never still; naked, they are not clothed; hungry, they are not fed; thirsty, they are not given drink; and these are 'the others.' Where is the man who does unto them as he would be done by? Do you? Do I?

"And where is the man who loves his neighbor as himself? Where would be the stress and strife of life, the wear and tear, the wrangle and scramble, the heartache and crime, the murder and suicide, if this precept were followed? Where would be all this agitation about labor and capital, the piling up of wealth on one hand and biting poverty on the other, if men--Christian men--loved their neighbors as themselves? Wise men of our generation are trying to devise ways and formulate plans to regulate the differences and disagreements among men; but even the reformers disagree among themselves and dissensions grow greater from year to year. Do men think that they are wiser than God? Do they think that if there is a better way Christ would have failed to tell us about it? Yet we are deaf to the simple words of the divine Teacher, the grandest precept ever given, the one and only panacea for the world's discord, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

"If only the world had such a religion as that, Max, Christianity would be Christian."

"And Christianity never will be Christian until men believe what they profess to believe. I am not much of a Bible scholar, I was brought up to reverence the Bible, not to read it, but I know that we are told that faith without works is dead. There is faith enough in the world, if it were alive, to save the world--but it is dead, dead and buried, and the devil is dancing to his hornpipes over its burial place--the opaque hearts of men. A general may fight a battle with an army of men, if they are alive--but if they are dead, dead in the trenches, they will not put up much of a fight. Yet the absurdity of fighting a battle with dead men is not greater than the inconsistency of a religion with a dead faith.

"I have not yet learned to understand the scientific principle back of the kind of religion that has been at work on this Flat; but I know that the faith of a grain of mustard seed would remove mountains of sin and crime and unholy desire from our land. A grain of mustard seed is alive, pregnant; given favorable conditions it will expand and increase, and flower and produce again, demonstrating the power of the Invisible. This work here on this Flat started from a grain of mustard seed; a grain sown and tended and watered and tilled by a woman's hand. And the Christian city and the stately church marvel that God has given the increase. You and I have special cause to honor this woman and her work, Eldrige, and we both owe her an endless debt of gratitude."

Again their hands met in silent companionship. Then Max arose. "I am afraid we have forgotten the ladies," he said. "Let us go and join them in the garden."

The doctor followed his friend, and he no longer felt that he failed to understand him; he was just an honest man, nothing more--nothing less.

CHAPTER XX

THE REVELATION

In a small village at the foot of a Colorado mountain, the Reverend Maurice Thorpe pitched his tent--literally pitched his tent--for he resolved to try the open air treatment for his malady.

He had tried the remedies that men have compounded and the devices that their skill have fashioned until the last one was tested and tried and found wanting; and when his faith in these was gone he resorted to the Nature cure--he resolved to let Nature have her way with him. So he set up his tent, lived in the open, bathed in the sunshine, breathed the mountain air; and he felt his strength returning. If there was something beside these things that helped his recovery he did not know of it at the time.

The good Book tells us that "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up," and there are yet some people in God's world who believe it.

The tent was pitched near the bank of a mountain stream. From far up the mountains it came, at times a turbulent, rushing stream and again narrowing to a silver rill. Part way down its course it came to a rocky formation which obstructed its flow and forced it into two different channels. During the summer months the larger of these two streams diminished in size and the other became dry. Following the dry course over stones and sand one was led through a region of wild and rugged grandeur. The circuitous course led through deep gorges and past great ledges of rock, and here and there huge stones stood out alone, like silent sentinels.

Mr. Thorpe, in his long walks over the mountains, often followed this course until he reached the chasm, or cave-like opening, where it ended. The rocks were dry and bleached now, except for here and there a patch of moss or bit of grass which grew among the crevices. Some birds had chosen the cave for their nesting place, and their cries echoed shrilly among the rocks. This wild, isolated spot was far removed from the usual haunts of men, but it held a peculiar charm for Mr. Thorpe, and he fell into the way of taking his books and reading there. Some goat-skins spread on the rocks served for a couch and a ledge of rock answered for a table; and here, one by one, his favorite books and magazines found a place. Here, alone with his silent friends, he became a recluse. The world that had so bitterly disappointed him, the life that had so grieved and vexed him, the love that had bowed and broken him, all were left behind.

The brook babbled noisily by the tent one rare morning in June; the birds called shrilly from the rocky ledges, and the sky was azure above the mountains. Mr. Thorpe looked over his letters and papers and laid aside those that he cared to take with him for the day. The canvas bag in which he carried his luncheon was packed and his water-bottle filled. He picked up his selection of papers, and as he did so his eyes fell on one that he had not noticed before. He examined it and saw that it was a copy of the Edgerly Times. Some headlines at the top of the page caught his eye: "The Transformation of the Flat. Once a Place of Vice and Want, Now a Thriving Factory Settlement." He glanced down the page and caught sentences that contained familiar names: "Mrs. Thorpe, former pastor's wife--Max Morrison, returned soldier--Dr. Eldrige Jr. and his young wife--"

Mr. Thorpe's face set in grim lines and the blue veins stood out prominently on his forehead. He folded the paper and thrust it in his pocket, picked up the canvas bag and water-bottle and made his way down the rocky course to the rock-walled cavern. His attitude was that of a man bowed, broken, vanquished.

When he reached the cavern he threw himself upon his goat-skins, drew the paper from his pocket and read the article carefully through to the finish. It dwelt at length on the factors that had brought about the change on the Flat.

When he finished the article he folded the paper slowly, methodically, as one whose mind is far away. His eyes were upon the stones at his feet, and slowly the doors of memory swung open, and before him were the hopes and aspirations of his life, its trials and disappointments--the questioning anguish of failure.

He had been so sure of his standards, so certain of the infallibility of his ideals. He felt that if the voice of the Lord had spoken to him, as it spoke to Moses from the burning bush it could not have brought to him more conviction than the ideals of his early manhood had afforded him--yet he had failed, his life was a wreck, a derelict stranded on the shore of time.

His mind had been so filled with the convictions that had come to him with the stamp and seal of his forefathers upon them that he had not grasped the possibilities, nor realized the demands of the vital, ever-present and progressive forces about him. And as one who starts upon a race bound and handicapped from the start, the inevitable had come upon him. But these underlying causes that had made shipwreck of his hopes and a tragedy of his existence had been to him as an unwritten book, unseen and unknown. And always when his mind had gone back over the past he had seen only the strewn and broken wreckage of his hopes, and the future was black with a dumb agony that he had no heart to face.

But one of the facts of this creation of ours and of the eternal verities that govern it is that sincerity never seeks in vain; when the sincerity of the soul asks, divine Love does not, could not, fail to respond. We must understand that there are many phases of mortal thought that parade under the mantle of sincerity which have little or no relation to that which is truly sincere. Sometimes we, as untutored children, ask for that which we would instantly cast from us were our requests granted; many times we beg and plead for that from which our very souls would shrink and cower; and very many times our motives are so obscure and our desires so warped and misshapen that we have no logical conception of that for which we ask. But the eternal fact remains: Man never yet asked for bread and was given a stone, never yet asked for an egg and was given a scorpion.

Now the man's life, bare to the quivering quick, stripped of every hypothesis, analysis and subterfuge of philosophy, was asking, sincerely asking, why he had failed. His self-righteousness slipped from him and lay like a cast-off garment at his feet; prejudice, which had held him in so firm a grip, retreated and slunk back into the dim, illusory creation where its multiform delusions have their inception; pride, humbled and forsaken, trailed its glittering pageant out of the range of his vision.

The branches of a tree outside the cave swayed in the wind and brushed against the rocks with a soft, rustling sound, and the birds called across the cavern and circled about the man's motionless figure. But outward conditions, location, surroundings and lapse of time were for the time no part of Mr. Thorpe's experience. The sun crept up in the heavens until it reached the meridian. The dog, the man's only companion in his rambles, came to his side and thrust his nose against the canvas bag, but receiving no attention, stretched himself again patiently beside his master.

When Mr. Thorpe raised his eyes from the stones at his feet he was not surprised at that which he saw. That which he beheld was exactly that which he raised his eyes expecting to see. On one side of the cavern there stood a grim, relentless form, heavy-browed and strongly built. There were iron bands about the waist and thighs and iron circles on the ankles, arms and wrists. One hand held an iron sword, the other an iron pen. And branded deep into the forehead in letters of red-hot iron was the word INTOLERANCE. On the opposite side of the cavern stood a figure of less massive proportions, of easy grace and supple bearing, clothed in a simple, clinging garment of white. In one outstretched hand was held a burning torch, and in the other a pen of light, tipped with a diamond point. Glittering gems upon the forehead fashioned the word FREEDOM. From out of the past they came, years, centuries, ages were upon them.

Now on the stones of the cavern walls each figure began to write, carefully, silently, remorselessly, until slab after slab stretching away into the dim recesses of the cave was filled with the history of the past. Every word that the iron pen recorded stood out clearly and distinctly, and there was no choice but to read. The silent spectator felt his senses shrink and quiver and his heart grow sick as the record passed before him, but he was not spared. His body grew rigid and every sense was in revolt, but the iron-bound hand did not waver nor relent. So vivid was the record that all the awful carnage and bloodshed, torture and persecution were as though actually transpiring before his tortured gaze, and the air was filled with the shrieks of the dying and groans and invectives of the tortured and tormented. But the physical horror of it did not compare with the agony of noble minds and fearless souls whose mental anguish the iron-bound hand did not hesitate to record.

The silent man, alone with these strange creations of his brain, fell to tracing the work of this iron-bound monster back to its birth or beginning. And as he pondered and questioned, it came to him with a distinct shock that the first intolerance was that which opposed itself to God's creation in the Garden of Eden. Its first form was that of a sinuous serpent; its voice that of the subtle testimony of the senses! He found also that this monster had assumed a form, and found a voice in every age in which mortal man had lived. And it came to him straight as an arrow and as keen to his highly-wrought senses that the relentless iron pen was writing, along with the other records, the history of the Church, the Church which had seemed to him to be infallible, which had come to him fraught with the faith of his ancestors, steeped in the blood of martyrs, and which held within its sacred teachings the only possible redemption for mankind, the Church for which he had labored. But he was not yet spared; remorse and contrition were having their way with him, and the sweat of agony was on his brow. For the first time in his life he entertained a doubt as to a literal hell; for what could a quenchless fire do to the physical body, compared to this which the bigotry and intolerance of his life were uncovering before him?

It was a relief to turn from this mental gloom, this verge of madness, from all this record of pain and woe, the history of the world's wrongs, to turn and behold the supple figure in white, writing with the diamond's flashing point. Here was a record of God's creation, untouched by mortal sense; a story of man untempted and woman unbeguiled; all things the image and reflection of the one God. Only that which is good and true and pure, that which is noble and righteous, was recorded by the flashing pen; the freedom which God gives to man can write no other record.

The events of the ages passed as a panorama before the solitary observer. From the bookshelves of the world were selected volumes written by a master hand, books that had stood the test of time and lived through the years. And the fact stood out with distinctness that the souls of the men who wrote them were not shackled, they were not slaves to another's will, nor bound by another's power, but that the minds that conceived them stood in absolute freedom before God. He was made to feel the throb and pulse of freedom, unbound and unfettered, that surged through the life of the artists that have painted the world's famous pictures and fashioned its works of art. He saw man expanding beneath the touch of the Infinite, answerable to the Infinite only.

Then the world's greatest singers stood before him, those to whom had been given the gracious gift of melody. And he knew that the possessor of this gift had arisen over difficulties, through trials and endeavor, until he reached the height where for him there sounded the supreme harmonies of the universe, and that he stood alone, exultant in the freedom of his power.

The flashing pen went back over the past and noted the world's reformers, men of staunch and steadfast character, who have stood for righteousness, for purity and truth, men who resisted despotism, put down superstition, stamped out ignorance and made possible the progress of science, even though their footsteps were stained with blood and led to the dungeon and the guillotine.

And this record of light, traced with the diamond's point, made it clear beyond question that in the small things as well as the great, only that which has been done in the freedom of the soul has made the world better. It is soul-freedom that has uplifted, transformed and glorified life. Every act of charity, of love, of Christian kindness, the cup of water given in the Master's name, the garment to the naked, the bread to the hungry, the visit to the prison if of any worth, of any efficacy or power, have been done in the freedom of the soul, prompted by the heart-spirit, the desire of the individual unhampered by another's will.

Now before the smitten man there rolled the long years, uncompromising and relentless as he believed the Judgment-day to be, the years in which he had held a fair, frail woman, soul and body in subjection to his wishes, dominated and controlled her by the superior force of his will. He had held to the belief that he had chosen to live apart from this woman that he loved because of her infidelity to the Church; now he was face to face with the conviction that he had deserted her because she had not subscribed unconditionally to scholastic theology.

Mr. Thorpe was aroused from his trance-like condition by the whimpering of his dog. The animal thrust his nose against the canvas bag and looked pleadingly into his master's face. Mr. Thorpe put out his hand and patted the dog's head; he gave him a biscuit from the bag and poured some water from the bottle for him to drink. Then he arose, stretched his stiffened limbs and walked to the entrance of the cave. The sun was nearing the horizon; the day had passed. He gathered his papers together, took up the untasted food and made his way back to the tent.

Pauline, who lived with her brother, and who still exercised a watchful care over her cousin, had been watching for him, and saw him when he came into sight. She was surprised at his appearance; his shoulders were squared to meet the bracing wind, and he swung along with the stride of a strong man, physically and mentally vigorous.

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAW OF LIFE

June was drawing to a close. The sun rode high in the heaven, and at evening seemed loath to leave the verdant earth in darkness. From the rows of neat cottages on the Flat came the scent of perfume-laden flowers. The garden beds, bathed in the glowing sun and watered from heaven, grew and throve; and the vines and shrubs lately planted vied with each other in growth and beauty.

Mrs. Thorpe had spent the day as usual in the school. All day she labored among the children, and at evening sent them glad and happy to their homes. There was something about her patience and loving kindness that touched the hearts of those about her; her presence was an inspiration, as well as a help and comfort.

At the close of school this June day Margaret asked Mrs. Thorpe to go with her to tea.

"You refused last night and the night before," she said.

"And I think it better for me not to go to-night, dear. I have some exercises to look over and some work to prepare for to-morrow. Another time, perhaps, but not to-night." And so Margaret left her and went her way alone.

The work that required her attention was examined and preparations for the morrow completed, and still Mrs. Thorpe lingered in the empty room. She walked back and forth through the room where all was silent save the sound of her footsteps; but she was not lonely; she loved the quiet of the deserted room and the memories that lingered about it. She loved the children among whom she worked, and she was hopeful and ambitious for them. She longed to see them in the way of honor and virtue, in the way of self-respect and independence; and she believed that this way lay before them. Her life was full of hopes and plans for their future, and she worked willingly, gladly, whole-heartedly, for the fulfillment of these plans.

Yet this woman had never tried to deceive herself. She knew that there was a room in her heart silent and empty, where memories, sad and silent, lingered among the shadows. She was not unhappy because of this; her happiness lay in accepting it and fashioning her life superior to it.

There had been a time when she believed that, like the chords of a harp, the sweetest strains of her life had been broken. She recognized the generally accepted view that if the union between a man and a woman be broken, the lives affected by the dissolution must necessarily be crippled and their usefulness impaired. But this view of life had gradually changed as she came into a larger, more scientific view of life. Now she believed that nothing but a violation of the life Principle could mar a life or rob it of its legitimate rights. She had come to understand that there is a Law back of Life, a Law to which all the children of creation must conform, and that nothing but an infringement of God's law can hurt or destroy in all His holy mountain. And the natural deduction followed that all relationships between individuals must be honest, sincere and pure. And that any law, written or unwritten, that fosters or favors the domination or control of one person over another is a mortal law, and invariably an immoral one. Man in the image and likeness of God is governed by righteousness and not by his fellow men.

Mrs. Thorpe was no longer a frail woman; her physical development had come about gradually and naturally. Her form that had remained slender and girlish long after her girlhood days had passed, was now rounded out into full contour of womanhood. Her eyes that had been too large and bright for her colorless face, now blended harmoniously with her soft, warm color. No stimulants nor artificial means had been employed to bring about this change; it had come naturally with her changed attitude toward life, her scientific understanding of life harmonious, as the reflection of the Infinite. Where once she had been irrational, ignorant and ill, now she was sensible, wise and well; the one following the other in natural sequence in the physical as well as in the mental condition.

Yet she was always frank with herself; she missed the love and companionship that had once been hers. She walked over to one of the windows and seated herself on the window-seat. The wind came in softly and touched the tendrils of brown hair about her face. She looked far off to the distant blue hills. "Maurice," she called, softly; "Maurice." Deep in her heart she knew that the old relationship could never exist between them again. They were both children of the one God, answerable to Him only. It was a violation of this law of life, a conception derived from tradition, and tainted with paganism that had brought about their downfall. "But oh, Maurice," she whispered, "I love you, love you!"

The flowers outside the window nodded and swayed in the gentle wind, and a bird whose happy secret lay concealed within reach of her hand, twittered, unafraid, on a swaying bough; and the twilight settled down about her.

When Mrs. Thorpe arose she shook herself free from the memories that had clung about her, and walked out into the semi-darkness. Wholesome and whole-souled, she was little given to retrospection or introspection, but chose to live her life in the fruitful present.

As she neared her home she saw that a light was burning inside.

"It is Jamie," she thought. Dear little Jamie; how many times he had remembered her, and lighted her home and laid her fire.

With a light heart she ascended the steps and entered the house. She glanced through the rooms to the little kitchen, where she expected to see the boy fixing the fire, or laying the table, perhaps.

"Jamie," she called, gently. "Jamie."

There was no response from the room beyond, but from a seat near her a man arose and confronted her--a man bronzed and bearded, who showed the impress of mountain life and contact with nature.

The light in the room was dim, but the recognition was instantaneous.

"Evelyn! Evelyn, my wife!" His arms were about her, and she lifted her face to his, as she had done on their bridal morn.

"Evelyn," he whispered, "can you forgive--forgive the wrong--the cruel years?"

She put out her hand and laid it against his face.

"There is nothing to forgive, Maurice--nothing to forgive--love is everything."

"And I have loved you, Evelyn; you have been near me, with me always."

"Always, Maurice."