It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of Promise.

The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the enemy was gone.

But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature. For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent, 312 and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The world was born again!

Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.

The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have believed it if it had been told.

And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song 313 of old Beaupre––which she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and–– But Cynthe was not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good. Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the world to do. And––when all was said and done––Rafe Gadbeau was in Heaven.

As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur’s Fork country and was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this scowling young gentleman with the big face.

“You’re with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren’t you?” he said, after some verbal beating about the bush; “how is she?”

“Why don’t you come see, if you want to know?” retorted Cynthe sharply.

Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:

“If you wanted to know why didn’t you come up all Winter and see? Why didn’t you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies through the black diphtheria, when their own 314 mothers were afraid of them? Why didn’t you come see when she was helping the mothers up there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn’t you come see when she nearly got her death from the ’mmonia caring for old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody then? Why didn’t you come see?”

“Well,” Jeffrey defended, “I didn’t know about any of those things. And we had plenty to do here––our place and my mother and all. I didn’t see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn’t seem to want to.”

“But she should have been delighted to see you,” Cynthe snapped back. “Don’t you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You called her ‘liar’ before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one certainty, she should have flown to you. No?”

Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure 315 that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.

“But she––she cared for me,” he blurted out. “I know she did. I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t tell––the truth; when you––you did so much for me.”

“For you? For you!” the girl flamed up in his face. “Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For you! Ha! I could laugh! For you! I put mon Rafe––dead in his grave––to shame before all the world, called him murderer, blackened his name, for you!

“No! No! No! Never!

“I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death. Never!

“I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which mon Rafe had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in. I did it for you! Ha!”

The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main argument.

“But why couldn’t she have told the truth?”

“The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, 316 you must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!

“Think you that if mon Rafe was alive and stood there where you stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. Non! Mon Rafe was a man! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me with!

“Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for you!

“You ask for truth! Tiens! I will tell you truth!

“You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an innocent man. Mon Rafe was the guilty man. The whole world must come forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he was guilty! Bah! You were as guilty as he!

“I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited for the man to stop 317 moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and mon Rafe was guilty. By how much?

“By one second. That was the difference between mon Rafe and you. Just that second that he shot before you were ready. That was the difference between you the innocent man and mon Rafe!

“You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were guilty. M’sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!

“You were more guilty than mon Rafe, for he had suffered more from that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You were ready. Only mon Rafe was a little quicker, because he was desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.

“And mon Rafe must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good M’sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you innocent!

“Bah! Innocent!”

She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was about even. She had 318 said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had felt that she owed mon Rafe a little plain speaking. She was much relieved.

Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl. He had forgotten her.

He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one thing.

Guilty? He was guilty. He was as guilty as––Rafe Gadbeau.

Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation. But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as anything but guilty of murder.

He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he had not, in 319 fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all. Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him. Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly. Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He had a right to kill him.

But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment: “As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau.”

And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: “There is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here.”

Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for some fresh trouble.

She need not have looked for new trouble, so 320 far as concerned things outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men. He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a career.

He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to him.

All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth more than its due. Already he was being picked 321 as an expert. Next week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber––a thing that if well done would render forest fires almost harmless.

He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law school diploma––the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of the world––look cheap and little.

But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the word––guilty.

What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall with the word written across it. Guilty––guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth Lansing––!

A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.

He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.

Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the high path of every struggling dream.

Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect, they had said that he was guilty. And he was guilty!

What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day on the railroad line? “Sooner or later we have to learn that there is something bigger than we are.” Was this what it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that was bigger than he?

He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination, misinformation, and some unreadable facts.

He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would––! But what was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything. This thing, this wall––with that word written on it––would stand between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.

Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!

But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more. Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man’s feet and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as––as Rafe Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words, turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?

It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe away Rafe Gadbeau’s guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. 324 But Rafe Gadbeau believed it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. Ruth believed it!

It was a delusion, yes. But––What a delusion! What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a confidence of relief and freedom!

Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held the germ of his guilt.

Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in any particular a different person, capable of anything different, likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning––given the circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning was just 325 as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute. There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it. There was no way that it might ever end.

And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too. She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in his mind.

What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from French Village?

He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from her!

But, no. Where was the use? It would only 326 bring them to that whole, impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered equally, or maybe more, from it.

Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He must talk of it to some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.

Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.

There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this, and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would understand. He would go to him.

He wrote a note which his mother would find in 327 the morning, and slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to Lowville.

“I came because I had to come,” Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had seated him. “I don’t know why I should come to you. I know you cannot do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell some one. I had to say it to somebody.”

“I sat that day in the courtroom,” he went on as the Bishop waited, “and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that everybody was determined to make me guilty––even you, even Ruth. And I was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing, but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man.”

“It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back against everybody.

“And––this is what I came to say––all the time I was guilty––guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!”

“I am not sure I understand,” said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey stopped.

“Oh, there’s nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty of that man’s death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn over into the next world, free. I cannot,” he ended, with a sort of grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against which he had come the night before.

“You mean––” the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, “What brought your mind to this view of the matter?”

“A girl,” said Jeffrey, “the girl that saved me; that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me.”

Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget the thing. His was a man’s soul, standing in the dark, grappling with a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities with reasoning. The man’s soul demanded a man’s straight answer.

“Before you could be guilty,” said the Bishop decisively, “you must have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you injure?”

Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This would clear the way. Whom had he injured?

Well, whom had he injured? Who had been hurt by his thought, his wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was none the worse of it.

Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.

Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in the way meant.

Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then––then why all this––? Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor, asking:

Whom?

Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came the answer; a single word:

“God!”

“Your business is with Him, then,” said the Bishop, rising with what almost seemed brusqueness. “You wanted to see Him.”

“But––but,” Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to 330 argue, “men come to you, to confess. Rafe Gadbeau––!”

“No,” said the Bishop quickly, “you are wrong. Men come to me to confession. They come to confess to God.”

He took the young man’s hand, saying:

“I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell Him, what you have told me.”

In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little resentful of the Bishop’s brief manners with him. He had gone looking for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.

Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn’t all the world continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did they find God?

Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word, some 331 key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?

God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find! A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.

The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.

Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was little and these things were very great.

Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it, direct to God.

It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence utter and unreasoning.

Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at him through the starting tears.

Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain upon him all these weary hours?

He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God’s air about him. For it was God’s air. That was the wonder of it. The world was God’s! And it was new made for him to live in!

He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He had been bound: he was free!

Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.

With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal God in very deed.)

Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.

What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved. They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just what was their opinion of the whole matter.

Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered what he could say to Ruth.

At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.

“Where is she?” he asked without preface.

Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed at the change she saw.

Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.

I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry. Non.

“The last house,” she answered, “by the crook of the lake there. She will be glad,” she remarked simply, and turned on her way.

Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of forgiveness––and of all things.

Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth.

So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled, pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying:

“I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you tell me what to say to you, Ruth?”

It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man’s stumbling, wholehearted 335 confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his horse stood.

There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly through the big bay’s mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question.

But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born in every woman, said:

“Poor boy, you have suffered too much!”

“What I suffered was that I made for myself,” he said thickly. “Cynthe Cardinal told me what a fool I was.”

“What did Cynthe tell you?”

“She told me that you loved me.”

“Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?” said the girl very quietly.

“Yes, it seems so. I’d known your little white soul ever since you were a baby. I knew that in all your life you’d never had a thought that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that there was never a time when you wouldn’t have given everything, even life, for me. 336 I knew it that day in the Bishop’s house. I knew it that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin.”

“Yes, I knew all that,” he went on bitterly. “I knew you loved me, and I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day––that day in the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!”

She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on doggedly.

“Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck you. And even that sight wasn’t enough for me. I kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it wasn’t so. I couldn’t help but know it. I knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till yesterday. I wasn’t big enough. I wasn’t man enough to see that you were just facing something that was bigger than both of us––something that was bigger and truer than words––that there was no way out for you but to do what you did.”

“Jeffrey, dear,” the girl hurried to say, “you know that’s a thing we can’t speak about––”

“Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn’t say anything. I understand.”

“And I understand a lot more,” he began again. “It took that little French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was 337 a deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as you did. That’s why everything was so. I wasn’t innocent. Things don’t happen as those things did. They work out, because they have to.”

The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was he going to say? But she let him go on.

“No, I wasn’t innocent,” he said, as though to himself now. “I fooled myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man. I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau’s quickness prevented me. No, I wasn’t innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca––!”

The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been going to say.

“You shall not say that!” she panted. “I will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!”

“But it’s––it’s true,” said the boy brokenly as he held her.

“It is not true! Never! Nothing’s true, only the truth that God has hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we say what we would have done, when we 338 didn’t do it? How do we know what’s really in our hearts? Don’t you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say things like that! We don’t know! I won’t let you say it.

“And if you do say it,” she argued, “why, I’ll have to say it, too.”

“You?”

“Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I thinking? What was in my heart? I’ll tell you. I was out there stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it gladly––with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!

“Now,” she gasped, “now, if you’re going to say that thing, why, we’ll say it together!”

The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had fallen on him and wrap it around herself too.

“My poor little white-souled darling,” he said through tears that choked him, “I can’t take this from you! It’s too much, I can’t!”

After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and argued dreamily:

“I don’t see what you can do. You’ll have to 339 take me. And I don’t see how you can take me any way but just as I am.”

Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.

Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began to speak in wonder and self-abasement.

“After all I’ve made you suffer––!”

But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared. She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been very kind.

At length Jeffrey said: “Well, I guess we’ll never have to misunderstand again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was––I needed Him. Now I want to find Him––your way.”

“You mean––you mean that you believe!”

“Yes,” said Jeffrey slowly. “I didn’t think I ever would. I certainly didn’t want to. But I do. And it isn’t just to win with you, Ruth, or to make you happier. I can’t help it. It’s the thing the Bishop once told me about––the thing that’s bigger than I am.”

Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions which she assured him was essential.

But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said. Though he admitted 340 that until last night he had not understood much of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her––and––and they would have all their lives to finish the instructions.

On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was progressing.

Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see.

And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.

Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it.

So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked.

Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden Junction. And Arsene was 341 very glad of this, for as he looked at his beloved M’sieur l’Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many years older and less sturdy.

The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now, when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had done right. Who was to tell?

And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting.

Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing’s side in the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night, on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him here, to this moment.

He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any other business whatever.

Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that choir unseen which had once given her the call of life. She had followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely, unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment.

Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those “other sheep.” And the breathing of his prayer was:

That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee and in each other.

THE END

Printed in the United States of America.