The Sunday following the Vigilantes’ mysterious discovery by the roadside, and immediately preceding the Easter holidays, was Palm Sunday. It dawned beautiful—warm and sunny as a late spring clay—and as the hours followed one another, each seemed more lovely than the last. Song sparrows sang from budding alder bushes, and robins flew hither and thither among the elms and maples, seeking suitable notches in which to begin their homes. As if by magic, purple and golden crocuses lifted their tiny faces on the southern sides of the cottage lawns; and the buds of the lilac trees, warmed and encouraged by yesterday’s showers, burst into leaf before one’s very eyes.

The world seemed especially joyous to the girls, as they roamed the woods in search of wild flowers, or sought about the campus for fresh evidences of spring. The long winter months had gone; Easter home-going was but five days away; and when they returned after two weeks at home, spring would have really come, bringing with it all the joys and festivities and sadnesses of the Commencement season.

At four o’clock, as the westward-moving sun gleamed through the pines, and fell in wavering lights and shadows on the brown needles beneath, they gathered for their vesper service, coming from all directions, their hands filled with pussy-willows, hepaticas, and mayflowers, their faces glowing with health and happiness, in their eyes the old miracle of the spring. To Virginia, as to many of the others, this Sunday afternoon hour was the dearest of the week. She loved the gray-stone, vine-covered Retreat, and its little chapel within; she loved the sound of its organ, and the voices of the girls singing; and most of all, she loved the little talks which Miss King gave on Sunday afternoons—dear, close, helpful talks of things which she had learned, and by which she hoped to make life sweeter for her girls.

To-day the chapel was especially lovely, for the altar rail was banked with palms, Easter lilies stood upon the white-covered altar, and the sun, shining through the high, narrow windows, flooded all with golden light. Virginia sat between Dorothy and Priscilla, holding a hand of each. It was so lovely to be there together! In her secret heart she was glad that Imogene’s mother had sent for her to come home the day before, for when Imogene was away Dorothy seemed to belong again to them.

Since St. Helen’s held no Easter service, as the girls were always at home, Miss King spoke to-day of Easter—how it had always seemed to her the real beginning of the New Year; how it signified the leaving off of the old and the putting on of the new; how it meant the awakening of new thoughts, and the renewed striving after better things.

“So, if we could only understand,” she said in closing, while the girls listened earnestly, “that Easter is far more than a commemoration, that it is a condition of our hearts, then we should, I think, reverence the day rightly. For as beautiful as is the story of the risen Christ, we do not keep Easter sacred merely by the remembrance of that story. The risen Christ is as nothing to us unless in our own hearts the Christ spirit rises—the spirit of love and service, of unselfishness and goodness. When that spirit awakens within us, then comes our Easter day. It may be many days throughout the year; it might be—if we could only rightly appreciate our lives—it might be every day. For every day is a fresh beginning, an Easter day, when we may decide to cast off the old and to put on the new, the old habits of selfishness and jealousy, of insincerity and thoughtlessness—all those petty, little things that mar our lives; and to put on our new and whiter robes of unselfishness and simple sincerity. If the thousands who next Sunday morning will sing of the risen Christ, might all experience within themselves their own Easter mornings, then this world of ours would have realized its resurrection.

“Let the hepaticas which you hold in your hands give you the only Easter lesson worth the learning—the lesson which your pagan forefathers in the forests of Germany taught their children centuries ago on their own Easter festival. You know how each spring the clusters beneath the pines are larger, if you are careful as you pick the blossoms not to disturb the roots. The long months of fall and winter are not months of sleep and rest for the hepaticas. Beneath the snow in the winter silence they are at work, sending out their rootlets through the brown earth, avoiding the rocks and sandy places, but taking firm hold upon that which will nourish them best. Thus do they grow year by year, at each Easter time showing themselves larger and more beautiful than the spring before.

“This is the Easter lesson which I wish you girls might all take to yourselves. As in the winter silence of the earth, the hepaticas send out their rootlets toward the best soil, so in the silence of your own inner lives are you here and now also sending out rootlets, either toward the soil which will give you a healthful, wholesome growth, or toward the barren places where you must cease to grow. Avoid the rocks of indolence and evil influence, the waste places of selfishness; but reach far out for the good, wholesome soil of good books, of a love and knowledge of the out-of-doors, of friends who make you better, of study which will enrich your lives. And as the flowers find themselves more firmly rooted year by year, so will you find yourselves growing in strength and self-control, in sincerity and firmness of purpose. Then, and only then, will you experience the real Easter—the awakening to the realization in your hearts that you, through your own seeking, have found that better part, which can never be taken away from you.”

In the silence that followed, while the organ played softly, Virginia touched with gentle fingers the tiny hepaticas in her lap. Was she sending out rootlets toward the right soil, she wondered? In the years to come would people seek her, as she sought the hepaticas in the spring, because she had found that “better part”? “That is why we go to Miss King and Miss Wallace,” she thought to herself, “because they have found the best soil, and have grown sweeter every year.” And, deep in her heart, she resolved to try harder than ever to avoid the rocks and the sand, and to send her rootlets deep down into the soil which Miss King had described.

Then she heard Dorothy by her side ask if they might sing the hymn of her choosing, and they rose to sing words which somehow held to-day a new and deeper meaning:

Silently they all passed out of the little chapel, and turned homeward. The sun, sinking lower, cast long shadows among the pines, and gilded with a farewell glow the chapel windows. Virginia, Priscilla, and Dorothy took the woodsy path that led to the campus. No one cared to talk very much. When they reached The Hermitage Dorothy went with them to their room; and as they filled bowls of water for the tired little hepaticas, and arranged them thoughtfully, for they some way seemed more like persons than ever before, she said all at once—looking out of the window to hide her embarrassment:

“I just thought I’d tell you that I know I haven’t been growing in very good soil this year; but I’m going to put out new roots now, and I’m not going to send them into sand either.”

The two Vigilantes dropped the hepaticas and hugged Dorothy hard without saying a word. Then, with their arms around one another’s shoulders, they stood by the western window, and watched the sun set behind the hills—happier than they had been for weeks.