TWO days after this Hoag came back from Atlanta, reaching home just at noon.

“I didn't go to the funeral myself,” he carelessly remarked at the dinner-table. “I had some fellers to see on business, an' I ain't much of a hand at such parades of flowers an' black stuff, nohow. Harriet is standin' it all right, but Eth' is in a purty bad fix. They've had a doctor with 'er ever since Jennie died. Eth' had never seen anybody die before, an' it seems that Jennie knowed enough to recognize 'er, an' begged 'er to stick by 'er side to the very end. Eth' has been nearly crazy ever since. She was too upset to go to the buryin', although plenty o' carriages was on hand, an' she could have rid in comfort. They offered me a seat at their expense, but, as I say, I had other fish to fry.”

“I knew it would go hard with Ethel,” Mrs. Tilton sighed. “It is a pity they let 'er see it. Such things are hard enough even on old, experienced folks. When are they comin' up, or did they say?”

“To-morrow. That ain't no place for 'em down thar in all that whiz, hustle, an' chatter, with a nigger fetchin' in a card or a bunch o' flowers every minute. The fellers that run the flower-stores certainly are in clover.”

Mrs. Mayfield and Ethel came in on the nighttrain which reached Grayson at ten o'clock, and, having retired, Paul saw neither of them till the next day. He had risen for his early morning walk, and gone down to the front lawn, where he was surprised to see Mrs. Mayfield nervously walking back and forth, her troubled glance on the ground. He had never seen her look so grave, so despondent. Her hair was drawn more tightly across her brow, and there was no trace of color in her pinched and troubled face. Seeing him, she bowed and made a pathetic little gesture of welcome. He hesitated for a moment as to whether he might intrude upon her, but some appealing quality of friendliness in her sad glance reassured him, and, hat in hand, he crossed the grass to her.

“I was very sorry to hear your bad news,” he said. “I was sorry, too, that there seemed nothing I could do to help.”

“Thank you; you are very kind,” the lady said, her thin lips quivering sensitively. “I have thought of you, Paul, several times since the blow came. After our recent talks I am sure you could have given us more consolation than almost any one else. At a time like this there is absolutely nothing to lean on except the goodness and wisdom of God.”

“Yes, of course,” he responded, simply.

“I am not worrying about Jennie now,” Mrs. Mayfield went on, gravely, sweeping his face with almost yearning eyes. “At my age one becomes accustomed to face death calmly, but, Paul, I am actually alarmed about the effect on Ethel.”

“I know, and I am sorry,” Paul said; “very, very sorry.”

“She has hardly touched any sort of food since Jennie died,” Mrs. Mayfield asserted, in a tremulous tone. “She is wasting away. She can't sleep even under opiates. She cries constantly, and declares she can't get her mind from it for a moment. We ought not to have allowed her to see the end, but we could not avoid it. Jennie was conscious almost to the last minute, though she did not realize she was dying. They thought it best not to tell her, and she begged Ethel and her parents and me and the young man she was to marry—begged us not to leave her. She seemed quite afraid. Then suddenly she had a terrible convulsion. She was clinging to my daughter's hand when she died. Ethel fainted, and had to be taken home in a carriage. She—she—Paul, she has lost all faith in the goodness of God, in an after-life, in everything. She is simply desperate and defiant. She can't be made to see any sort of justice in it. She is bitter, very bitter, and hard and resentful. Two kind-hearted ministers down there tried to talk to her, but she almost laughed in their faces. Some sweet old ladies—intimate friends of ours—tried to pacify her, too, but could do nothing. I wish you had been there. You have comforted me more than any one else ever did. Your faith seems such a living, active thing, and even while down there under all that sadness I found myself somehow feeling that your thoughts—your prayers were with us.”

“Yes, yes,” he nodded, his blood mounting to his face, “that was all I could do. Prayer is a wonderful force, but unfortunately it seems without great or immediate effect unless it arises out of faith itself, and perfect faith is very rare.”

“I understand,” the lady sighed. “I hear Ethel coming down. I wish you would talk to her. I am sure you can do her good, and something must be done. No medicine can help her; her trouble is of the mind. It is natural for persons to lose faith under a shock like this, and in time get over it; but—but, Paul, I've known people to die of grief, and that is really what I am afraid of.”

Ethel, as she descended the veranda steps, saw them. She wavered for a moment, as if undecided which way to go, and then, as if reluctantly, she came on to them. Paul noted the drawn whiteness of her face and the dark rings about her despairing eyes. Her whole being seemed to vibrate from a tense state of nervousness. Her lips were fixed in a piteous grimace as she gave Paul her hand.

“Mother's told you about it, I am sure,” were her first words.

“Yes,” he nodded, sympathetically, “it is very sad.”

She took a deep, tremulous breath, and her lips were drawn tight as from inner pain. “Paul,” she said, bitterly, “I didn't know till now that even an omnipotent God could invent a thing as horrible as all that was. If—if it would amount to anything I would curse him—actually curse him.”

“I am going to leave you with Paul,” Mrs. Mayfield said, suddenly catching her breath as if in pain. “I have something to do up-stairs. Listen to him, my child. He has comforted me, and he can comfort you. You must not allow yourself to become hard like this. Oh, you mustn't—you mustn't, darling! You'll break my heart.”

“Oh, I don't know what to do—I don't know what to do!” Ethel shook with dry sobs, and there was a fixed stare in her beautiful eyes. “I can't think of Jennie being gone—being put away like that, when she had so much to live for, and when the happiness of so many depended on her recovery.”

Without a word, and with an appealing and significant backward glance at Paul, Mrs. Mayfield moved away.

“Would you like to walk down to the spring?” Paul proposed, gently. “The air is so fresh and invigorating, and breakfast won't be ready for some time yet.”

She listlessly complied, walking along at his side like a drooping human flower in movement. He heard her sighing constantly. He did not speak again till they were seated at the spring, then he said:

“Your mother overrates my power of giving consolation; there is nothing helpful that any mortal can do at such a time. I cannot give you my faith. It came to me only after years and years of suffering, sordid misery, and dense spiritual blindness. But I want to try, if you don't mind. I'd give my life to—to save you pain, to turn you from your present despair. Will you listen to me if I'll tell you some of the things that I passed through? You can't see it as I do, Ethel, but I am absolutely positive that your cousin is now a thousand times happier than she was—happier than you or I, or any one on earth.”

“Oh, I know what you will say,” Ethel wailed, softly. “I believed such things once, as you know. But I haven't been frank with you, Paul. Seeing your beautiful faith which brought you back here in such a wonderful way, I could not bear to let you know the truth; but I have been in doubt for a long time, and now I have nothing to hold to—absolutely nothing. You might argue a thousand years and you could not—kind and gentle though you are—convince me that a just and merciful God would allow my poor cousin to suffer as she suffered, and cause me to feel as I feel only through my love for her. If there is a good God, He is powerless to avert such as that, and a creator who is not omnipotent is no God at all. We are a lot of helpless material creatures staggering through darkness, dragging bleeding hearts after us, and yearning for what can never be ours. That's the awful, repulsive truth, Paul. It's unpleasant, but it's the truth.”

“I will tell you what I passed through after I left here, if you will let me,” Paul began, a look of pained sensitiveness clutching his mobile features. “It is hard to have you—of all persons—know to what depths of degradation I sank; but I feel—something seems to tell me—that my story may help you. Will you hear me?”

“Perhaps you ought not to tell me anything that is unpleasant,” Ethel said, listlessly.

Paul lowered his head and looked at the ground. “I am not sure, Ethel, that it is not my duty to go from man to man, house to house, and tell it word for word, thought for thought, deed for deed. The world, as never before in its history, is groping for spiritual light, and my life—my soul-experiences—would shed it upon any thinking person. No one could pass through what I have passed through and doubt the existence of God and His inexpressible goodness. It is painful to tell you, for, above all, I want your good opinion, and yet I must. Will you listen, Ethel?”

“Yes, yes,” she answered; “but, Paul, if I am absent-minded don't blame me. I've not thought of a single thing since Jennie died but the way she looked then, and in her coffin afterward. I don't think I can ever get those things out of my mind. They are simply driving me insane.”

“Nothing but an absolutely different point of view will help you,” Paul said, gravely, his glance now resting tenderly on her grief-stricken face. “When my father died I, too, was desperate. When I ran away from here that terrible night I was as near akin to a wild beast as ever mortal man was. I was at heart a murderer gloating like a bloodthirsty savage over another's death. I won't go into detail over the earliest part of what I went through. I traveled with a band of thieving gipsies for a while. Later I joined a circus, and there gravitated to the same sort of associates. Some of the company were not immoral; but I was a murderer hiding my guilt, and among only the lowest of the low did I feel at home. All others I hated.”

“Oh, do you think you ought to—ought to—” Ethel faltered. “How can it do any good to—” Her voice failed her, and she stared at him dumbly.

“I think I ought to tell you, because it is the hardest thing in the world for me to do,” he said, his tone low and labored. “I want you to know me as I was at my worst. I can't feel that I have the right to sit by you and be treated as a friend while you are unaware of what I have been. For the first two years I was as low as the lowest. I hated life, man, everything, and yet there was always something holding me back from absolute crime. Down deep within me there was always a voice, always a picture, always a sunlit scene—”

He choked up, pretended to cough, and looked away to avoid her inquiring eyes.

“I don't quite understand,” she prompted him, with her first show of interest.

He turned and looked steadily into her great, shadowy eyes.

“The scene was the roadside down there, Ethel. The picture was that of a refined, gentle little girl, her eyes full of sympathy. The voice was hers, telling me that she was going to pray for—for me.”

“Oh, oh, why do you say that now?” Ethel cried. “Now, now, after I have told you that I no longer—”

“Because the little girl ought to know,” he answered. “She should be told of the clinging effect her promise—her prayers—had on a storm-tossed human soul. The scene, the voice, the picture, never left the wanderer. They grew like pure flowers in the mire of his deepest sin. In many cases it is the memory of prayers at a mother's knee in childhood that haunts the worldly minded in after-life; but my childhood had no prayers, and that little girl became my guardian angel.”

“Oh, Paul, Paul, don't, don't!” Ethel cried, and for a moment she seemed to have forgotten her grief.

“But I must go on,” Paul answered. “I finally reached Portland and settled down. I was tired of roaming, and under a small printer I began to learn type-setting. I made rapid progress. I had access to a good public library, and I passed most of my evenings in study. Later I began reporting on a big newspaper, and from that I gradually drifted into the writing of editorials. I don't take any credit for the success I met, for the articles I wrote were readable only because they were without heart or soul, and appealed only to individuals like myself. I ridiculed everything, tore down everything. A thing only had to be praised by others for me to hurl my vitriol upon it. The arrant hypocrisy of the church-members, the mental weakness of the preachers, and the gullibility of the public were my choice themes. Birds of my own particular feather flocked about me and congratulated me. I became vain of my powers. I was sure that I was a great intellectual force in the world. My salary was raised, and I found myself in comfortable circumstances. I belonged to a small society of advanced thinkers, as we styled ourselves. We held meetings once a week and prepared and read essays. The great materialistic scientists and writers were our guides and gods. We pitied all the rest of the world for its inability to reach our height. That went on for several years, then an odd thing happened.”

“What was that?” Ethel was now almost eagerly leaning forward, her pale lips parted.

The color in Paul's cheeks had deepened. “I must tell that, too,” he said. “And I shall not shirk the humiliation of it. There was a young poet in Boston whose parents lived in Portland. His books had been widely circulated, and when he came out on a visit the papers had a great deal to say about him. I don't think I ever sank lower than I did then.” Paul's voice faltered. “I was jealous. I read his books out of curiosity, and found them wholly spiritual, full of dreams, ideality, and mysticism. Then I sat up all of one night and wrote the most caustic and virulent attack on his work that I had ever written. It was published at once, and created a local sensation. My friends gave me a dinner in honor of it, and we drank a good deal of beer and filled the air with smoke. Selections from the poet's books were read and laughed at. That seemed all right; but an unexpected thing happened. The next day the young man called at the office and sent in his card, asking particularly for me. It made me furious; my associates on the paper thought he had come to demand personal satisfaction, and so did I. I kept him waiting in the reception-room for some time, and then I went in to him, fully expecting trouble. So you can imagine my surprise to have him rise and extend his hand in a timid and yet cordial manner. I had never seen him before, and I was struck by the wonderful, almost suffering delicacy of his face and a certain expression in his big, dreamy eyes that I had never seen before. He seemed greatly embarrassed, so much so that at first he seemed unable to talk. Presently he managed to tell me, in the frankest, most gentle manner, that he had come to see me because, after reading my article, he was afraid he or his work had offended me personally in some way. I was completely taken aback. I simply couldn't make him out. I was tempted to speak roughly, but couldn't. We sat down, and he started to explain more fully why he had come. He said it was his aim in life to live in harmony with God's law, and that, as he saw it, the feeling between him and me was spiritual discord which ought not to exist. He said he was sure, when I understood him fully, that I could have no personal animus against him for conscientiously writing the poems I had attacked. He said it was the highest law of life for all men to love one another, and until they did there would be human discord. I can't tell you half he said. I know, somehow, that for the first time in my experience I found myself facing a human being who was more spirit than matter, and who possessed a power against which I had no weapon. He seemed to feel my embarrassment, and rose to go. At the door he gave me his hand again and pressed mine warmly. 'I am sure,' he said, 'that nothing but good can result from this visit. Something within me always tells me when I ought to do a thing like this. It is always hard to do; but if I refuse to obey I invariably suffer for it.'”

“How very strange!” Ethel exclaimed. “And what came of it?”

“Much, much,” Paul answered. “When he had gone I remained for some time in the room with the door closed. I was hot from head to foot with shame. I felt worse than if I had been thrashed in public. I did not know what to do, and I was sure something had to be done. I returned to the office, and the reporters and printers gathered about me, full of jokes and eager for information. I could say nothing. A mechanical jest rose to my lips, but I didn't utter it. I could no longer make sport of him behind his back. I put on my hat and went for a walk. I felt sure that I owed him a public apology, and I knew that I would not be able to make it, and that fairly confounded me. I admired him more than any man I had ever met. During that walk a maddening mental picture rose before me.” Here the speaker's voice quivered. “I fancied, Ethel—I fancied that I saw you as I last saw you. Some one was presenting that young man to you. I saw you both walking off together across the meadows in the sunshine among the flowers. He was gathering them for you. You were receiving them, and it seemed to me that you and he were mated as man and woman never had been mated before.”

“Oh, Paul, don't!” Ethel protested. “You must not think of me that way; but go on—go on!”

“Day after day, week after week,” Paul continued, “I fought the inclination to write that apology. I'd start it, only to throw it aside as something above and beyond my nature. I began to loath myself. I had sufficient cause. I was a murderer living under a false name, continually lying about my past, haunted by remorse, and gradually losing my reason. Then came the crisis. I call it my 'black day.' You will despise me when I confess it, but I decided to—kill myself.”

“Oh, Paul, Paul!” Ethel covered her face with her hands. “How could you—how could you?”

“I was a blind man, goaded to despair. I was swimming with my last feeble stroke in a torrent of sin. It was Christmas Eve. The joy of the rest of the world only added to my loneliness. All my acquaintances had gone to relatives and friends, and I was alone in my desolate room. I had never faced myself so plainly as I did that night. I did not believe there was any future life, and I told myself that I was tired of the struggle, and wanted to go to sleep never to wake again. I thought that would solve it, you see, I wrote a note to old Silas Tye, feeling somehow that I wanted him to know what had happened to me. I got ready. Forgive me, but I want you to hear it all. The door' and windows were tightly closed, and I turned on the gas and lay down on the bed. I folded my hands on my breast. I was sorry for myself. Then, just as I was beginning to notice the odor of the gas, I seemed to see old Uncle Si on his knees praying for me, and I asked myself what was he praying for, to whom or what was he praying? My next thought was of you and your sweet, girlish faith, and then I recalled the poet and his beautiful ideas of life. All at once, as if in a flash of light, came the thought that you three might be right and I wrong; that while I could kill my body I might never be able to kill my soul. 'God help me!' I cried, and why I did not know, for I had never prayed before. I sprang up and turned out the gas and opened the windows and breathed the fresh air deep into my lungs. Just then the church-bells of the city rang out in the announcement of the day on which Christ was born. I was tingling all over with a strange, new hope. What if I should, after all, actually be immortal?

“I sat down before the fire and asked myself, for the first time in my life, 'Am I flesh, blood, and bones, or am I wholly spirit?' Was it a physical possibility for my brain-cells—tiny fragments of matter—to evoke the spiritual tempest through which I was passing? Was there a God and was He good? If not, why was the universe?

“I had brought home a new book—the Life of Tolstoi—to review, and I began to read it with the first touch of sympathy I had ever given such a work. It clutched me and held me like a vise. At one time Tolstoi—like myself—had been tempted to kill himself because he had no faith, and life was nothing without it. Like myself, he had been influenced by materialistic thinkers and worldly-minded associates. He had wealth, a noble's title, and great fame, and yet he had thrown them all over that he might become as a little child. Among the great men of the earth—his mental peers—he could not find the peace of soul that he found reflected in the faces of the poorest peasants on his estate. He wanted to be like them, because he felt they were more like God than he. For him the riddle was solved. It struck me that his life was a wonderful revelation of spiritual truth, if it was anything aside from senility. To satisfy myself on this point I spent the next day reading his books, becoming more and more convinced of his rational sincerity and the unity of his life from beginning to end. Tolstoi's admiration for Rousseau led me to Rousseau's life and Confessions. From him I went to Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and all the great poets. I neglected my duties on the paper, and fairly buried myself in books such as I'd never read before. My desire to satisfy myself that my soul was immortal became a veritable passion. I read everything that could possibly throw a light on the subject. The first thing that I became convinced of was my stupendous ignorance. For instance, I had never dreamt that one could have any faith which was not founded on the religious creeds of which I had heard all my life; but I soon saw that it was possible to acquire a belief like that of Emerson, Whitman, Wordsworth, and Goethe, which soared above all so-called revelation and reached out into the transcendental. I read the works of many philosophers, spurning almost angrily those who leaned to the material side of life and reverently devouring those who, like Kant and Hegel, were idealistic. Among the modern ones William James seemed inspired. Then Bergson held me with his idea that the simple intuition of the trusting masses was a better guide to hidden truth than the intellectuality of all the scholars.”

“I didn't know you had read so much,” Ethel said, when Paul paused and sat tenderly regarding her grief-stricken face.

“I was forced to,” he smiled. “I was in a corner fighting for life against awful odds. I was sick and disgusted with existence. In my new atmosphere I began to breathe for the first time. I was sensing the eternal meaning of things. I began to see why I had been made to suffer, and I was glad. The habits of my associates, their cramped and aimless lives, now seemed horribly sordid. It sounded strange to hear them speak so seriously and gravely of trivial affairs when a vast new world was fairly throbbing around me. I ventured to speak with a tentative sort of respect of some of the books I had read, and they laughed at me. I was forced into cowardly craftiness. I hid my wonderful secret and continued to go among them. But that couldn't go on. One cannot serve both the spirit and the flesh and be true to either, so I gave up my associates. I apologized to the poet, wrote a strong review of a new book of his, and we became good friends.”

“Then, then”—Ethel laid an eager hand on his arm—“then you decided to—to come home?”

Paul smiled reminiscently, his glance on the gray wisps of clouds slowly lifting themselves from the mountain-side up into the full blaze of the sun.

“I simply had to do it,” he said. “It was as inevitable as life itself. I knew it was right, and that settled it.”

“So you came!” Ethel cried. “You came back.”

“Yes, and when I reached here that night and learned the truth I saw God's hand in it all. Now, you see why I have told you this. Can you believe there is any other design than good—infinite good—behind sorrow, trouble, and agony? Your grief is great—it seems unbearable now; but behind it, above it, beyond it is a purpose so divinely wise that no mortal sense can grasp it.”

Just then Cato appeared at the kitchen door ringing the breakfast-bell. Ethel rose apathetically, and they slowly walked toward the house together. They saw her mother among the flowers waiting for them. Paul heard his companion sigh and, looking at her, he saw that she had lapsed into despair again.

“I can't bear it,” he heard her say. “I can't—I can't. It's awful, awful!”