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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56675 ***
+
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+
+  _THE ATTIC GUEST_
+
+  _A NOVEL_
+
+
+  _By_
+  _ROBERT E. KNOWLES_
+
+  _Author of "The Web of Time"
+  "St. Cuthbert's" etc._
+
+
+
+  _New York Chicago Toronto
+  Fleming H. Revell Company
+  London and Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1909, by
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+  Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
+  Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
+  London: 21 Paternoster Square
+  Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+  _To
+  My Father_
+
+
+
+
+_FOREWORD_
+
+This story, which the authoress herself entitled "The Attic Guest,"
+would probably have never been given to the world but for an incidental
+visit which I paid to a certain manse.  It was then and there that the
+following chapters, now first presented to the public, were entrusted
+to my hands.  The hands which placed the manuscript in my own were
+those of a lady of much charm, modest, cultured, winsome; and no one
+could know her without feeling that her qualities of heart were even
+greater than of intellect.  She was a minister's wife, as I need hardly
+say; and the busy years in that most mellow of all vineyards had given
+her face much of its own spiritual beauty, something of the deep
+harvest-joy shining through her eyes.  Tranquil eyes were hers,
+chastened by many a sorrow, yet aglow with a native merriment that the
+stern schooling of a lifetime seemed powerless to subdue.
+
+She asked that I would read her story; "and send it forth," said she,
+"if your heart approve."
+
+Her plea for asking this service at my hands was that I had had some
+humble association with the world of letters.  Mayhap she thought this
+pleased me well--and perhaps it did.  I urged her to send her book
+forth with her own name upon it--but this she firmly refused.  She
+shrank from the publicity it would involve, she said, as must any
+Southern lady.  I believed her implicitly.  "Especially," she went
+on--dwelling earnestly on this--"since my book is the frank and artless
+story of the most sacred things of life, of a woman's life at that.
+Some will smile," said she, "and some deride, and many disbelieve; but
+the story is the story of my inmost work and life and love.  Let it see
+the light if you think it worthy."
+
+I promised; and thus my promise is redeemed and my humble part is done.
+
+ROBERT E. KNOWLES.
+
+_Galt, Ontario._
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  I.  The Light Fantastic
+  II.  Just Eighteen
+  III.  The Bridge That Lay Between
+  IV.  The Danger Zone
+  V.  An Alternative
+  VI.  The Glint of the Heather
+  VII.  "The Glory of Their Strength"
+  VIII.  Dealings with the Samaritans
+  IX.  Love's Tutorship
+  X.  The River Leading to the Sea
+  XI.  A Mother Confessor
+  XII.  The Wail of the Lowly
+  XIII.  The Lynching
+  XIV.  Girding on the Armour
+  XV.  "Our Lady of the Snows"
+  XVI.  A Knightly Guest
+  XVII.  My Ordination
+  XVIII.  The Dayspring from on High
+  XIX.  The Taint of Heresy
+  XX.  Harold's Sister--and Another
+  XXI.  "Love's Old Sweet Song"
+  XXII.  When Joy and Sorrow Meet
+  XXIII.  "The Voice of Rachel"
+  XXIV.  "Come, Ettrick; Yarrow, Come"
+  XXV.  A Select Congregation
+  XXVI.  The News a Broker Brought
+  XXVII.  Where Gus Cast Anchor
+  XXVIII.  "To Old Point Comfort, Dear"
+  XXIX.  The Hour of Healing
+  XXX.  Eden in the Attic
+
+
+
+
+_THE ATTIC GUEST_
+
+
+
+I
+
+_THE LIGHT FANTASTIC_
+
+"That room in the third story is good enough for any elder," my mother
+was saying as I came into the library; "more than likely they'll send
+us a country elder anyhow, and he'll never know the difference--he'll
+think it's the spare room, I reckon."
+
+I was only eighteen then, and I didn't care much where elders slept, or
+whether they slept at all or not.  Besides, it was already nine
+o'clock, and I was going to a little party where "Tripping the light
+fantastic" was to be the order of the evening.  By the way, I only
+found out the other day that Milton was the author of that fantastic
+toe phrase--and the news startled me about as much as if some one had
+told me Cromwell invented "Blind Man's Buff."
+
+"Has Dinah got me buttoned right?" I asked, backing up to my Aunt
+Agnes.  Aunt Agnes was my mother's sister.  I can see her yet, her
+hands going up in an abstracted kind of way to correct one of Dinah's
+oversights; for she was still revolving the great question of the elder
+and the attic, the attic and the elder.
+
+"You're all right now, honey," she said in a moment, giving me a gentle
+push away, her whole mind reverting to the subject of family concern.
+
+"I'm sure," she went on in the same breath, "it's going to be an elder
+from the country.  Mr. Furvell told me to wait after prayer-meeting
+last night; and he said the billeting committee sat till two in the
+morning trying to divide the ministers and elders as fairly as they
+could--and he thought we were going to get an elder from Pollocksville."
+
+"Let us hear what Henry thinks about it," my mother suddenly
+interrupted, her face turned towards the door as she spoke.  "Sit here,
+Henry," as she made room on the sofa for my uncle; "sister Agnes thinks
+it will be dreadful to send our delegate to the attic if he's to be a
+minister--but she doesn't mind a bit if he's an elder."
+
+My uncle smiled as he took his place beside my mother.  And the face
+that was turned in fondness upon his wife at the other side of the room
+had a look of kindly drollery.  For uncle was the tenderest of men, and
+his countenance reflected the purity and gentleness of his heart.  He
+was a gentleman of the old school, was uncle.  His great-grandfather
+before him had been born in our quaint little Virginian town, and the
+gracious culture of a century and a half had not been for nothing.  The
+mist of years lies between me and that April evening when we discussed
+the approaching Presbytery that was to honour our little town by
+convening in our midst, pondering our approaching guests as solemnly as
+though they had been envoys from a royal court; but I can still see the
+tall athletic form, not yet bowed with age--he was less than fifty--and
+the careless-fitting, becoming clothes that wrapped it in sober black,
+and the easy dignity of his poise as he held out his hands to the
+fire--above all, there rises clear before me the grave and noble face,
+strength and gentleness blending in the mobile mouth and aquiline nose,
+while the large gray eyes looked out with the loving simplicity of
+childhood upon the little circle that was so dear to him and to which
+he was so dear.  Yet there was latent fire in those gentle eyes; when
+in complete repose, they looked out like two slumbering furnaces that
+needed only to be blown--and any one familiar with the best type of
+Southern gentlemen would have descried the old Virginian looking
+through them, the native courage, the inborn anger against meanness,
+the swift resentment of a wrong, the reverence of womanhood, the pride
+of family, that were such salient features of the old-time patrician of
+the South.
+
+"What's your say on the subject, Uncle Henry?" my mother asked again,
+breaking the silence.  For my uncle's gaze had wandered from his wife's
+face and was now fixed upon the fire.  It was April, as I have said,
+but a generous flame was leaping on the hearth.  So generous, indeed,
+that the back window whose tiny panes looked towards the west was open;
+this is a form of conflicting luxuries which only Southern folks
+indulge in.
+
+"I just think the other way round," Uncle Henry finally responded;
+"different from Agnes, I mean," his eyes smiling as they met his
+wife's.  "I'd send him to the attic if he's a preacher; a minister
+wouldn't be so apt to misunderstand, because they're trained to sleep
+anywhere at a moment's notice--and they know what it is to have to stow
+their own company away in every nook and corner.  Besides, it's those
+same preachers that make heaps o' folk sleep sitting right bolt up in
+church.  But an elder," Uncle Henry went on reflectively, "an elder
+kind o' wants to make the most of it when he's visitin'--it's more of
+an event to him, you see; they look on going to Presbytery as a kind of
+rehearsal for going to heaven."
+
+"Then they ought to be glad to get the highest place," broke in my Aunt
+Agnes triumphantly, for she had a ready wit.
+
+"Depends on how you get there," retorted Uncle Henry after a very brief
+but very busy pause; he had no mind to be worsted in an argument if he
+could help it.  "Everything depends on how it's given to you.  There's
+all the difference in the world between being lifted and being
+hoisted--I saw a fellow tossed by a bull one day out at Cap'n Lyon's
+farm; he got the highest place, all right, but he didn't seem to relish
+the promotion."
+
+My mother, who was accustomed to act as umpire in these little
+contests, turned a humorous eye towards Aunt Agnes.  The latter, we all
+knew, was fumbling frantically for some response which seemed to elude
+her; my mother's pose reminded me a little of the man who had held the
+watch the week before, down at Jacksonville, when two gentlemen of the
+ring had paid their respects to each other.  I knew all about how
+they're counted out if they don't show up within a certain time; yet it
+isn't likely I'd have known anything about it if Mr. Furvell hadn't
+warned us from the pulpit that we mustn't read the account of the
+affair--he said the details were shocking.  So I had to wait till Aunt
+Agnes was finished with the paper.
+
+I really do not know how the argument concluded, for at this juncture a
+very sable face appeared suddenly at the door and a liquid voice
+announced: "Please, Miss Helen, Misteh Slocum's waitin' fo' yeh in de
+parluh."
+
+I was ready for the intimation, for I had heard the old brass knocker
+muttering a minute or two before--and I was just at the age when I knew
+the different knocks of different gallants.  And not a few of these
+latter were wont to lift that frowning brass face on our front door and
+let it fall again--the wonderful thing about it was, that the oftener
+they came the more gentle grew the knock--but this is the way with all
+knockers at all Southern homes that shelter comely maidens.  And I am
+neither modest enough nor untruthful enough to deny that I deserved the
+adjective aforesaid--especially as this story may never see the light
+till my eyes give it back no more.
+
+"I'm hoping he'll be a minister," I volunteered, as I turned a moment
+at the door.
+
+"Why?" cried my mother.
+
+"What for?" chimed my Aunt Agnes.
+
+"Well," I answered, "elders pray too long--I went to sleep one night at
+worship when that elder from Hickory was here at the Synod.  And he
+said I was a devout worshipper, don't you mind, when I kept kneeling
+after you all got up.  I don't think that was very nice for a religious
+man to say," I averred, tugging at a reluctant glove.
+
+"He wouldn't think so if he saw you now--starting for a dance,"
+suggested my Aunt Agnes.  "But you look mighty sweet, honey--though I
+don't believe you've got enough on for a chilly night like this.  Be
+sure you have something round you when you're coming home."
+
+"Mr. Slocum will see to that," assured Uncle Henry, his expression
+interpreting his words.
+
+"Hush," said my mother chidingly; "the child doesn't know what you
+mean."  Every word of that evening's conversation is vivid to me yet,
+as it well might be; and I have often wondered why my mother held such
+a sanguine view of my simplicity.
+
+I don't remember much about the succeeding frivolities of that April
+evening.  Sometimes I catch again a few fugitive snatches of the melody
+that inspired the mazy throng; I remember what I wore--it served long
+years of umbrageous usefulness as a lamp shade after I was through with
+it; and I think I danced nearly every dance, no foreboding of soberer
+days chastening the gladness.  And I forgot all about the elder
+question, wondering no more where he might lay his devoted head.  But
+before Mr. Frank Slocum bade me good-night as I disappeared within the
+heavy oaken door of my uncle's house, he unwittingly recalled the
+subject.
+
+"You're expecting a visitor to-morrow, aren't you?" he said.
+
+"Oh, yes," I answered, suddenly remembering.  "Yes, we're going to have
+one of the men attending the Presbytery; I think it's to be an
+elder--and I'm afraid it's him for the attic," I concluded.  It was
+half-past two and I was too tired to bother about grammar.
+
+"I wasn't thinking about the Presbytery," returned Mr. Slocum, and he
+smiled in the moonlight.  "Somebody else is coming, isn't he?"
+
+Whereat I hope I blushed; it was the time for that mystic operation.
+For I knew he referred to Charlie, dear old Charlie, who made his pious
+pilgrimage once a month--and I was the shrine.
+
+"Yes, he's coming," I said, toying with the knocker as I spoke.
+
+"You don't seem as jubilant about it as you ought to be," ventured Mr.
+Frank.
+
+"You don't know how I feel," said I; "maybe I'm jubilant inside."
+
+"Then you shouldn't sigh," pursued my escort.
+
+"I didn't know I sighed--but, even if I did, perhaps sighs are like
+dreams, and go by contraries," I returned, making the best stand I
+could.  "A maiden's heart is an unknown sea," I affirmed, quoting from
+some distant poem.
+
+"Besides," Frank went on, disdainful of all poetry, "if you really
+cared like you ought to, you wouldn't be out so late the night before;
+you'd be having your beauty sleep right now, just to be lovely when he
+came--or, at least, to be even lovelier," he amended; for Frank was a
+Southern gentleman.
+
+"I never had it bad enough to go to bed over it," I admitted; "but
+he'll be here to-morrow--he'll be here to-morrow," I chanted, as
+ecstatically as I could.  Yet I felt at the time that the words didn't
+ring much; it was a little like trying to peal a chime on a row of
+pillows.  Then, before I knew it, I yawned, yawned brazenly into the
+face of the brass knocker on the door.
+
+"Exactly!" said Frank, his hand moving to his hat, "that's just about
+the size of it--Miss Helen, you're a little idiot," and his honest eyes
+shone bright with their candour of affection.
+
+"Sir!" said I, employing a splendid intonation.  And I gave a little
+stamp on the stone step beneath me--all true Southern girls love to
+stamp.  "Sir!" I repeated, "you forget yourself."
+
+"But I don't forget _you_," Frank retorted swiftly, his face quivering
+a little; "though I wish I could, a little more.  And I know you don't
+care anything about him, the way he thinks you do--or the way he wants
+you to.  And God help him--and you too--if something doesn't happen;
+you have either gone too far, or not far enough, Miss Helen," he
+declared boldly, looking straight into my eyes in the moonlight.  And I
+couldn't help gazing back, for his look and his words both had a kind
+of fascination for me; I reckon I knew they both were true.  So I
+didn't get angry--only a lot of things, all connected with the past,
+rushed like a flood before me.  But I will tell them all in another
+chapter.  I had no mind to discuss them with Frank just then.
+
+So I simply said "Good-night, I'm going in."  And Frank said good-night
+with great respect and turned to go away.  I peeped through the crack
+just before I closed the door, and I could see that his eyes were on
+the pavement and his step was slow.  Yet I cared nothing for that,
+except as it boded what might be of interest to myself.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_JUST EIGHTEEN_
+
+As I sit and look back on it all now, I feel almost sure that a girl's
+real life begins at somewhere about eighteen years of age.  A boy is
+different; his life begins at a great many different times.  To start
+with, he has a distinct promotion at four or five--he casts off skirts
+forever, with contempt, and that itself is a promotion.  Then he takes
+on the uniform of manhood, glorying in the frank two-leggedness of his
+kind; and in quite a real sense this marks the beginning of his
+manhood.  Indeed, a boy has mile-posts all along the way.  Top boots
+come next, and the first pair, clothing his knees with their red
+leather crown, give life a rosy splendour.  This pales, of course, as
+does all other glory--but the day reappears in divers forms.  His curls
+are one day amputated, falling fast, the hour of their doom still
+bright with an undaunted sheen--and the young Samson shakes himself
+gleefully in this new token of manly strength.  Then comes his first
+game of ball, or his first venture with tools; or he is one day
+permitted to hold a slumbering butcher-horse while its master steps
+within; in return, he is allowed to drive a block or two--trifling
+enough, as some one smiles and says, but every boy remembers it and it
+marks a new stage of power.  About this time he learns to swim; all the
+past is forgotten, the future all despised, till he becomes amphibious.
+Then comes his first watch--time is annihilated in the tumult of that
+hour; then a gun of his own--its first report is heard around the
+world.  And so it goes on, ever onward, from one lock to another in
+life's long waterway.  By and by the stream widens far; he must choose
+his profession--then his partner--then someone, and the romance seems
+never at an end.
+
+But a girl's life has no such variety; skirts are her abiding portion,
+from swaddling clothes to shroud.  And her curls, undisturbed, thicken
+with the years.  No top boots for her, nor game of ball, nor wizardry
+of tools; for her nothing but the long drab way of girlhood, beginning
+with the nursery and ending with the same.
+
+Till she is about eighteen.  Then comes, or almost always comes, the
+first waterfall in the stream of time.  And what a wild cataract it is,
+leaping with the tidal movement of her soul!  And how mystically deep
+that spring of love which is its far-off source!  And how the light of
+heaven plays upon it all!
+
+I was just eighteen when this first came to me.  And all my eighteen
+years before seem now, as I recall them, like a placid afternoon such
+as slips by unnoticed in the summer-time; the clock strikes the hour, I
+suppose, but no one hears it.
+
+I was born in 187-.  No woman is ever quite content to tell the very
+year, but the decade does not matter.  And my mother has often told me
+what a lovely October day it was--my dawn was mingled with the
+deepening twilight, and the flowers were still abloom in the garden,
+and some darky children were playing in the dusty road before the door,
+and the soft autumn sky was now wreathed in smiles, now bathed in
+tears, fitting symbol of the checkered life that lay before me.
+
+My father died when I was two and a half.  My only recollection of him
+is an impression of his great height and strength as he once bore me on
+his shoulder, when I had toddled a few yards from the door to meet him.
+My mother tells me I often started forth on very uncertain feet, as
+often borne back with my arms about his neck--but there lingers with me
+the memory of only one such pilgrimage.  Yet it is distinct and vivid,
+I am thankful to say, and I can see yet the low brick fence, with its
+cope of stone, all vine-entangled as it was; and to this day I never
+catch the breath of the magnolia without seeing again the full-bloomed
+beauty that stood close to the steps within the wall.  I think I
+plucked a spray as I was borne past it that evening on my father's
+shoulder.
+
+Both my mother and my aunt thought it strange that I have no
+recollection of my father as he lay in the calm majesty of death; for
+my mother took me with her alone into the parlour and shut the door
+upon us three when she took her last farewell--so she has often told
+me, her voice breaking as she spoke.  And she says I wanted to linger
+after she turned to go, gazing steadfastly upon the silent face,
+fascinated by the master mystery of life; it seems, too, that even in
+her grief she noticed my disdain of the lovely flowers that ensconced
+the coffin, though I had the child's passion for those gratuities of
+God, so all-absorbing was the witchery of death.  And I have been told,
+though none of my kinsfolk ever mentioned it--the old undertaker told
+me himself one day when I was playing among the shavings in his
+shop--how pitifully hard I fought when they began to shovel in the clay
+after my father had been lowered to his grave.  It is one of our
+Southern customs for the ladies, veiled past recognition, to follow
+their dead to the uttermost; and it was in the cemetery I dropped my
+mother's hand and began my unavailing struggle to rescue my father from
+suffocation and eternal night.  I was borne away, probably easily
+beguiled, and my father was left to his long loneliness.  But I
+remember nothing of either of these incidents, great and tragical as I
+thought them, and still think them to be; even yet, I never turn away
+from a new-filled grave without a sense of selfish cruelty--there seem
+such oceans of God's fresh air everywhere, yet denied to those we leave
+behind.  And I have never been able to free myself from the pain of
+this bitter helplessness--that there comes a time when the best we can
+do for our nearest and dearest is to leave them all alone beneath the
+darkening sky.
+
+Those who knew her best say that my mother was never the same again.
+No melancholy, or despondency, or indifference to life came to mark the
+change, but her soul took new depth under the influence of sorrow and
+her outlook was more to the eternal.  There was plenty of brightness
+and merriment--frank laughter, too--all of her after life; but it was
+the play of the sunlight upon the noble gloom of ocean, stirred gently
+by some influence from afar.
+
+She soon abandoned her own home, leaving it to strangers; they saw no
+white face on the pillow in the front room up-stairs--they gave dances
+in the parlour, and no recumbent form disturbed the revelry.  My
+mother's sister was Mrs. Lundy, my Aunt Agnes; her husband was Henry
+Lundy, my Uncle Henry.  To their home we went to live, I in unconscious
+glee, my mother in hope of healing.  There my life was spent till I was
+eighteen years of age--and later; but my story begins with that
+particular year, which, as I have hinted, is to so many a maiden's life
+like the month of April to the Northern river--for then the ice breaks
+up and the stream moves outward to the sea.
+
+I was eighteen when I fell in love.  That is, if I fell at
+all--concerning which I have my doubts.  For many a girl thinks she has
+_fallen_ in love when all the time she _walked_ in.
+
+Ah me! those days are far past now; but the words I have just written
+gave my pen a good half hour's rest while I mused on all the meaning of
+them.  For after a girl becomes a mother, after she has children of her
+own--which is about the same thing--she is far more fastidious about
+love, and far more solicitous that it should be genuine, than when she
+was choosing for herself.  And she knows then, what she knew not at
+eighteen, that the difference between falling in love and walking into
+it, is just the difference between Heaven and--Hades.  (What a
+convenient word "Hades" is!  It was made, I reckon, expressly for
+woman's use.)
+
+Well, I am afraid I _walked_ in, the first time I got in love.  Yet I
+feel it is a sort of blasphemy to say the _first_ time--for no true
+girl is ever really in love but once; born, loved, died, thus stand the
+mountain peaks of life, and each can rise but once.  So I must amend by
+saying that the first time I tried to be in love, and everybody else
+thought I really was, I got there by the pedestrian route.  I rather
+think I honestly wanted to be in love, had almost resolved to be; and
+when a girl's face is once set in that direction she will see land
+ahead, though half an ocean lie between--or, to change the figure, she
+is like those silly chanticleers that crow at midnight, thinking it the
+dawn.
+
+One other thing, too, I must tell in my defense.  I was _pushed_ in.  A
+dearer and more devoted mother than mine no girl ever had.  But this I
+will dare to say--and I am old enough to know--I do believe every true
+mother-heart has, somewhere in its great expanse, a cavity that aches,
+never to be filled till some one who loves her daughter comes to dwell
+there evermore, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh by the great
+adoption of their united love.  Two streams, both different--but the
+confluence is mighty.  And then there is another cavity, farther in,
+its ache more poignant still--and that place is never filled, that pain
+never banished, till she scans some baby face, her leaping heart
+descrying the likeness to her own, all the lovelier because the image
+of the adopted mingles with it.
+
+I am right well aware how horrified my mother would have been if any
+one had dared to hint that she, or any other gentlewoman, cherished the
+hope of some day being either mother-in-law or grandmother--or both;
+and I cannot help a little shudder as I write those terms myself.  But
+the truth as I first set it down, free from those rude bald words, is
+not to be denied.
+
+It was at the seaside that I first met Charlie Giddens.  Mother and I
+met him the same evening, in the midst of a merry dance on the grand
+piazza.  He was tall and dark, and his hair was gloriously rebellious,
+every way for Sunday.  We both noticed that he looked at us a little
+long, a little earnestly, I thought--but he asked mother to dance
+first, and that's where his head was level.
+
+"Don't fill your program all up, Helen," she whispered as she handed me
+her fan, gliding out with the tall figure, so handsome in his spotless
+ducks.
+
+"Did you notice how gracefully he handed me to my seat?" mother said
+after he had left her; "he has the manners of a cavalier."  For the
+old-time Southern lady puts gracefulness next to grace.
+
+"He dances like a Dervish of the Desert," I remarked, a little
+maliciously perhaps--for he had bowed and left us.
+
+"Like a courtier, you mean," my mother amended, her eyes still
+following him.  "And his father's a ship owner in Savannah, and his
+mother comes from one of the oldest families in South Carolina,"
+concluded my mother, naming the ancient house.
+
+"That's why you like his dancing," I suggested; "old families all dance
+exquisitely--the older, the sprightlier, it seems."
+
+"He has such a delicate way of putting things," pursued my mother; "he
+was describing his mother to me, and he said she had a lovely figure,
+just about my size," surveying somewhat hopefully her rather
+substantial form the while.  For this was a very live issue with my
+mother; she lived in daily horror of growing stout, and any such
+reassuring word was balm of Gilead to her.
+
+But what's the use of going on with this?  This story's main concern is
+not with my dancing days, and what I have written, or yet shall write,
+regarding them, is only a streamlet leading towards the river of my
+life.  And my story--if it be ever finished, or however far it roam,
+must follow the winding current of my changeful years.
+
+Yet this I must record, that Mr. Giddens came back that night and stood
+once again beneath the swinging lanterns that cast their fitful light
+on mother's face and mine.  And he asked for another dance--but it was
+not from mother.  And whenever we swirled before her as we compassed
+the great piazza, I could see how mother's eyes followed us
+approvingly, more approving than I had ever known them to be before.
+
+And thus it all began--all that never should have been begun at all.
+That is what I meant when I said, a little farther back, that I was
+_pushed_ into love--and by my own dear mother.  Oh, it all seems so
+terrible, so cruel to me now, looking back over all the happy years,
+beautiful in the uncreated light of love--it is really awful to reflect
+how often the hands that love her most are the fateful hands to many a
+girlish life, pushing the poor protesting heart, so gently, yet so
+relentlessly, pressing it on, on to the dark abyss of a loveless union.
+Mr. Giddens was of gentle birth, I know; he was handsome, cultured,
+charming,--and he was very rich.  All these shed their light about him,
+and my mother gloried in their radiance.  Their light, I said--but it
+was artificial.  The summer sun of love had never shined on me at all;
+so that while I could not but feel the effulgence of it all, yet only
+one room of my life was lighted, and that the hallway--the vast world
+within was still wrapt in darkness.  I knew all the time that I did not
+really love Mr. Giddens.  Yet I could not see why I should not--and
+there the great peril lay.  It was that fatal path that misled me.  All
+the outward sign-posts pointed my way as leading towards his own--but
+these sign-posts were marked by human hands alone, and my mother never
+tired of spelling out their message.
+
+"There's not a girl in Virginia," she said one day, "but would give her
+head for him.  He's aristocratic, and handsome, and rich."
+
+"And the greatest of these is rich," quoth I.
+
+"For shame!" cried my patrician mother, "that's the least of it."
+
+"Not at all," I retorted.  "For if a girl doesn't love a man as
+fiercely as----"
+
+"As what!" exclaimed my mother, shocked.
+
+"As devotedly as she should," I revised, "she won't get much comfort
+out of his blue blood--and she can't do much with his beauty--but his
+cash is a different matter," I affirmed; "she could get her little
+hands on that all right."
+
+"Helen, you're a foolish child," said my mother gravely.
+
+"That's what I often think myself," said I, more gravely still.
+
+Well, that was the way it went on.  I told him "yes" one night.  I do
+not believe he heard me, but he seemed to know I yielded, for he did
+what he had never done before--nor ever other man beside.  And thus
+life's greatest, holiest moment was stained to me; and the sacred altar
+was lighted with far different fire than that for which God meant it.
+I had never been kissed before--at least not that way--and even then I
+felt how I was cheated of my birthright, and I marvelled at the sense
+of shame.  But that can never be recalled, so I try not to dwell upon
+it.  Nor can it be amended, and the loss is to eternity.  I have known
+the rapture since then, the primal bliss--but the virgin joy was
+tempered with the cruel thought that it had all been rehearsed before.
+And the bitterest feature of it all is this, that it had never been,
+except for her who loved me with a mother's love.  But her ambition
+mingled with her love--and these two are enemies.
+
+If I had been a little more in love, I reckon mother would not have
+tried so hard to urge me on.  But I was not--I was a little less.  And
+mother kept kneeling beside the poor little flame on the mean altar of
+my heart, to quote the old hymn, and she kept the bellows going pretty
+steadily, if haply she might make the fire burn.  Or if I had been a
+little less in love, perhaps she would have given over--for I was dear
+to her.  But I was not; I admitted he was rich, and handsome, and
+superior--and these seemed quite enough reason to a girl's mother why
+there should be true affection.  So I was neither a little more, nor
+yet a little less, in love with Charlie--and that is Hades, to use the
+convenient word again, when it has to do duty for the real thing.  But
+mother kept on encouraging me, saying she knew I'd be very happy, and
+drawing lovely pictures of the position I would occupy and the
+leadership in society that would be mine; and mothers can make ashes
+look like bread--only they don't have to eat them through the hungry
+years.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_THE BRIDGE THAT LAY BETWEEN_
+
+"Do you think we're a star chamber?" I said to my mother, as she stood
+at the parlour door with a cushion under either arm.
+
+"Think you're what?  Think who's what?" she queried in amazement.
+
+"Where are you taking those cushions to?" I pursued, glancing at her
+burden.
+
+"To the up-stairs sitting-room.  You know uncle always takes a nap
+before he goes to bed."  Which was true enough; uncle fancied he didn't
+sleep well if he neglected this preliminary canter on the sofa.  That
+was where he was wont to try divers notes till he struck the proper key
+for the night's performance.
+
+"That's where you all are going to stay this evening," I averred.
+"Uncle will snooze there while you and aunty play cribbage."
+
+"Yes, of course--why?" answered my mother wonderingly.  "You and Mr.
+Giddens will be in the parlour, won't you?"
+
+"That's what I meant about the star chamber," I rejoined.  "I think
+it's right foolish, the way you all take to your heels when Charlie
+spends an evening here.  There's a plenty of room in the parlour for us
+all."
+
+"There shouldn't be," my mother made reply; "I never saw the room big
+enough for more than two when your father and I were lovers--which we
+were the longest day he lived," she added, her voice softening to the
+romantic note.
+
+"And did you always want to be alone?" I asked seriously; "always alone
+together--before you were married, I mean?"
+
+My mother smiled, her eyes half closing in reminiscent thought.  "Yes,
+child," she answered slowly, "alone--together; I believe those two
+words describe nearly all the joy of life--alone--together.  Don't you
+know what I mean, Helen?" and there was a deep tenderness in her voice
+as she dropped one of the cushions on a chair, coming close and taking
+me in her arms; "doesn't my dear one know the meaning of it?  Oh,
+Helen, I want you to be so happy.  And you will be, won't you--you are,
+aren't you, my darling?  You love him, don't you, Helen?"
+
+My face was hidden in her bosom.  After a minute's silence she drew
+back, that she might look into my eyes.  "You love him, don't you,
+dear?"
+
+"Yes," I said, again seeking the shelter of her breast.
+
+"I'm so glad, my darling," she murmured.  Then she picked up the fallen
+cushion and went on her way up-stairs.
+
+I stood by the piano, listlessly fingering some music sheets that lay
+on top of it.  Suddenly the stillness was broken by my mother's voice.
+
+"Helen," she cried; "oh, Helen."
+
+"Yes, dear," I answered, stepping to the door.
+
+"I forgot to tell you the news; our Presbytery guest isn't coming till
+to-morrow.  They sent us word just this afternoon--and they're almost
+sure it's going to be an elder."
+
+"Then 'it' will have to go in the attic," I rejoined, shouting the
+opprobrious pronoun up the stairs.
+
+"Helen, dear," the tender voice remonstrated, "how can you speak like
+that--calling him 'it.'  That isn't respectful, child."
+
+"It's your word," responded I; "you said it's going to be an elder."
+
+"But I didn't actually call him it," my mother defended.  Her answer
+was rather long in coming; I could tell she was struggling with the
+verbal problem.
+
+"Oh, well, I beg his pardon," I conceded; "anyhow he won't care what we
+called him, when he strikes the attic," and the argument ended in a
+duet of laughter.
+
+"And, Helen," resumed my mother, by this time one or two steps
+down-stairs, "don't you think you'd better dress?  Mr. Giddens ought to
+be here right soon now, shouldn't he?  I think you ought to wear your
+pink organdy--he says he loves you in pink, you know."
+
+"He ought to love me in buckskin," I flung back, "if he loves me at
+all.  He ought to love me for my own sweet self undecorated--you see,
+mother, how romantic you're making me.  If he's really got the frenzy
+he won't need any pink things to infuriate him," I insisted, laying
+Spanish bull-fights under tribute.
+
+"Please yourself, child," my mother responded as she disappeared, "but
+I know, when your father was courting me----"
+
+"You ought to write a book on the subject, mother," I interrupted
+gaily; "you've evidently had it down to a science.  If you'd write a
+book and call it 'First Principles of Courtship' or 'Love-making for
+Beginners' you'd help things on a lot."  But by this time mother was
+beyond the range of conversation and my literary counsel met with no
+response.
+
+I went back to the parlour.  The music sheets were fumbled once again.
+Then I tried to read, but found it impossible to settle down.  I turned
+once more to the piano and presently found myself softly singing a
+little love-verse, familiar since my childhood.  I crooned it once or
+twice:
+
+  Still must you call me tender names
+    Still gently stroke my tresses;
+  Still shall my happy answering heart
+    Keep time to your caresses.
+
+
+The words made me lonely--like a phantom song.  I involuntarily smiled
+a little as I caught myself sighing while the piano notes died away;
+perhaps it was the gathering twilight that gave me such a plaintive
+feeling in the region of my heart.
+
+Suddenly a voice came from above.  It was Aunt Agnes this time.
+
+"Hear that, Helen?" she sang out.  "There's music in that screech,
+isn't there?"
+
+"What screech?" I answered back, a little suspicious that she referred
+to my simple warblings.  Yet I knew she could scarcely have heard.
+
+"The locomotive," she promptly replied.  "Didn't you hear that engine
+whistle?--that's his train, you know.  I reckon you were listening for
+it all right."
+
+I rose and moved to the window, grimly wondering if ever lover had so
+many assistants in the business.  I could see the white puffs of smoke
+as the train steamed slowly into the distant station.  The dreamy
+ringing of the bell floated in through the open window, mingling with
+the pensive sounds of evening.
+
+And I was lonely, so lonely!  I knew that Charlie had just alighted
+from the train, doubtless hurrying even now to his hotel.  He would
+soon shake its dust from off his feet, I knew, and old "Rastus"--Rastus
+knew Charlie's orbit and kept a keen lookout for him--would bring him
+with fitting haste to me.  My cheek reddened, then paled, as I seemed
+to see Charlie's eager face, his impatient arms, his ardent lips.  I
+quivered a little, and tore two or three of the petals from a rose I
+had chosen from a bowlful on the table; the harmless things floated to
+the pavement beneath the window.
+
+Suddenly a bird's rich full note fluttered in and fell upon my ear.  I
+listened.  And his mate responded--full and sweet and tremulous the
+answer came.  The love-throb pulsed vibrant through it.  I thought it
+beautiful; and I listened, enchanted, as the tender message came again
+and again.  Soon the note grew fainter--and I think I caught a glimpse
+of the winged lovers as they glided close together into their bridal
+chamber in the deep shade of the magnolia tree.  The rich blossoms hung
+like curtains, quivering a little where the mated pair had passed
+within--that fragrant retreat was holy.
+
+Still gazing, my attention was diverted by the sound of feet upon the
+brick pavement that went past our house.  I listened, watching.  And a
+minute or two later, all unconscious of my presence, a youth and maiden
+passed beneath the window.  Neither was speaking, and their steps were
+slow, as if they cared not where they led.  Somehow they compelled my
+interest at once.  I knew them both, though their station was quite
+different from mine.  She collected belated accounts for a local
+laundry--he drove their horse, delivering from door to door.  I watched
+them wistfully as they passed on, by and by leaning out the window to
+follow their career.  They turned to the left and made their way out on
+to the bridge.  And I saw him once--though the dusk was deepening--I
+saw him take her hand; she withdrew it quickly, but he gently recovered
+it a moment later, this time without resistance.  And thus they went on
+together, far out on the lonely bridge, every step taking them farther
+from everybody else, but nearer to each other.  The twilight hid them
+soon; and they were alone together in the shelter of the gathering dark.
+
+Then was a wild tumult surging in my heart.  I wondered what made it,
+and why the lump rose so persistently in my throat, even while I feared
+to know.  For she was only a working girl, I thought, and he a swain
+who drove a beast of burden.  Yet I knew that that old bridge, rickety
+and worn, lay between me and the Celestial.  And I wondered who it was
+that wrote that song about the tender names and the tresses so gently
+to be stroked.
+
+I went back towards the piano; for I heard the distant sound of wheels.
+Then I rang the bell; a servant appeared in an instant.
+
+"Lyddie," I said, "light the gas, please."
+
+"Yes, Miss Helen.  I done seen a transfeh drivin' to the fwont doah,
+Miss Helen," as she returned with the taper.
+
+"I heard it too," said I.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_THE DANGER ZONE_
+
+The stealthy dawn was just laying its gray hand on the slowly waking
+world as I crept the next morning into my mother's room.  I was
+shivering a little, for our April mornings are often far from warm.
+Besides, I was excited--and the night had been passed in sleeplessness.
+
+"Is that you, child?" my mother asked, starting suddenly.
+
+"Yes, are you asleep?"
+
+"What's the matter?  Are you sick?"
+
+"No," I answered, creeping in; "but I want to talk to you.  I'm
+frightened."
+
+"What frightened you?" and my mother's tone was louder--"anybody trying
+to break in?"
+
+"Oh, no, nothing like that," as I cuddled closer.  "But I want to talk
+to you--Mr. Giddens frightened me."
+
+My mother was all awake.  "Mr. Giddens, child," she exclaimed, rising a
+little on the bed; "how on earth could he frighten you?  Tell me how,"
+the note in her voice more imperative now.
+
+I was silent a moment, not knowing just how to begin.  Perhaps I felt a
+little ridiculous too.
+
+"Tell me, Helen," my mother said presently, and quite firmly; "I'm
+waiting."
+
+"Well," I began hesitatingly; "well, it's this--he wants me to get
+married."
+
+My mother made an impatient poke at the bed-clothes.  Then she partly
+rose on her elbow.  Then she turned her pillow, finally laying her head
+back upon it.
+
+"Helen Randall," she broke out, and her voice, like the dawn, had a
+gray tinge about it, "Helen Randall, you're a silly little
+goose--coming in here trembling, and waking me up and scaring me half
+to death, only to tell me that the man you're engaged to wants to marry
+you."
+
+"But, mother," I began earnestly, "it's different--you don't
+understand."
+
+"Nonsense, child," she interrupted, "there isn't anything to
+understand.  What do folks get engaged for?  What does any lover want,
+except to get married?  And this is the great fright you got; it seems
+that you got engaged to a man, and then he alarms you by suggesting you
+get married!  Let's go to sleep," and my mother patted the pillow with
+her cheek, preparing to resume the operation I had interrupted.
+
+"But I won't go to sleep," persisted I.  "You don't understand--Mr.
+Giddens wants to marry me right off--right away soon."  My mother
+turned her head a little on the pillow.  She was wakening fast.
+
+"What's that you say?" she said.
+
+I knew she had heard me quite well, but I repeated it willingly enough.
+"I say he wants to get married--very soon.  His family is going to
+Europe shortly--and it seems his father says we can spend the first
+part of our honeymoon on the _Sea-Nymph_, and then join them all in
+Europe later on.  And so Charlie has quite made up his mind that----"
+
+"What's the _Sea-Nymph_?" interrupted my mother eagerly.
+
+"It's the name of the yacht--a new yacht they've got."
+
+"A yacht?  A private yacht?" breathlessly asked my mother.
+
+"Yes, a private yacht," I answered, not much elated about it either.
+
+"I knew a family in Norfolk once that had a private yacht," my mother
+reflected, just a little reverently.  "And all those rich New York
+people keep yachts at Newport," she added in a kindred tone.
+
+"That doesn't matter much," I said, a trifle acridly; "half of the
+people on them seem to be divorced, if you can believe the papers.  But
+Charlie's quite set on this plan of his--of theirs--and I'm distressed
+to death about it.  I don't want to just go right away so soon," and my
+voice shook in spite of myself as I nestled a little closer to my
+mother.
+
+"What did you tell him, Helen?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"I said no--at first."
+
+"And what after?"
+
+"Nothing--that's the worst of it."
+
+"Why?  Why the worst of it?" pursued my mother.
+
+"Because he thinks I will--and it frightens me."
+
+"Helen," and mother's voice was quite reproachful, "I can't make you
+out at all, child.  You've promised to marry him--and I can't
+understand you.  Why, when your father wanted me to marry him I
+couldn't get too early a day--and we didn't have any yacht either."
+
+"No, but you had father," I interposed.
+
+"That's foolish," said my mother.  And I thought it was myself,
+although I felt my rejoinder had a meaning I couldn't just explain.
+
+We talked till the sun was pouring in through the eastern window; yet
+we determined little else than this--that mother thought I should and I
+was almost sure I couldn't.
+
+I think we all felt better in the morning.  Mother and I certainly did;
+even Europe and a yacht didn't impress me so formidably as in the
+ghostly dawn.  We had shad for breakfast, fresh from its briny home;
+and if shad be skillfully cooked it can colour all the succeeding day.
+Wherefore, when we were all gathered on the porch in the glorious
+sunshine mother immediately became communicative.  She had previously
+advised me that it would be better to say nothing to Uncle Henry or
+Aunt Agnes about the subject that engrossed us both; this of itself was
+almost a guarantee to me that mother would tell it all, for she
+generally took this means of reserving that luxury to herself.  So it
+wasn't very long till she had told them all about it.  Before she was
+through, the private yacht had grown to dimensions of a man-of-war
+fitted up in oriental splendour--and I had been all but presented to
+half the crowned heads in Europe.
+
+"And I've been telling Helen how foolish she is," she concluded
+earnestly, looking to my aunt and uncle for confirmation of her view.
+"It isn't every girl gets a chance of a honeymoon on a yacht, is it,
+Henry?" nodding towards me over her shoulder.
+
+But uncle didn't seem as agitated as he should have been.  "Oh, I don't
+know," he replied drawlingly, "it depends on your position on the
+yacht.  I suppose there'll be women aboard, cooks and such like, that
+nobody'd envy very much."
+
+"Position!" my mother ejaculated vigorously; "I should think the wife
+of the owner would have position enough for anybody."
+
+"Yes--if she owns _him_," replied my uncle slowly.
+
+"Owns what?" echoed my mother.  "What do you mean, Henry?"
+
+"I mean if she owns _him_," repeated uncle cheerfully; "if she loves
+him enough, you know--and if he does the same.  Sooner be on an old
+raft--if they really own each other," uncle went on quite seriously,
+"than the finest ship in the world--if they don't."
+
+"You're great on love," said mother; "and that's all right for a
+beginning--but there are other things besides.  I think love needs a
+good solid foundation to build on," as she nodded emphatically towards
+my uncle.
+
+"Yachts aren't very solid things," retorted the latter calmly; "and
+Europe's a long piece away.  And if my views on love aren't what they
+ought to be, blame Agnes there," as he looked in unevasive tenderness
+towards his wife.
+
+I caught the look she cast back at him; it made me think of the lonely
+bridge.  I glanced, too, at the bloom-laden magnolia--and the thought
+flashed through my mind that an old raft, as uncle said, might be made
+heavenly enough.
+
+"When is Mr. Giddens going to call again?" my mother suddenly enquired.
+"I heard him say he was going home on Monday."
+
+"He's coming now," Aunt Agnes announced in a low voice; "yonder,
+look--he's just coming past the Hickey's boat-house," her keen eye
+studying the distant figure.  "And who's that with him?" she exclaimed
+a moment later; "why, it's Mr. Furvell, sure as the world.  I reckon
+he's coming here too--some news about the elder, likely enough.  I
+didn't know he and Mr. Giddens were acquainted."
+
+"Neither they are," said my mother.  "I reckon they just happened in
+with each other."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if the dominie's shadowin' him," uncle ventured
+gravely; "lookin' for a job, you see--this'll be worth two hundred to
+him at the least, won't it, Helen?" as he looked quizzingly at me.
+
+"At the very least," I answered; "I'm pretty expensive--as well as
+dear," which little playfulness seemed to tickle uncle immensely.  He
+was proceeding to expound the humour to the others when mother
+interrupted.
+
+"Run to the door and meet them, Helen.  And bring them right out to the
+porch."
+
+"I'd rather not," I demurred--"I'm shy."  But the knocker had already
+sounded and Lyddie had already started for the door.  Uncle Henry
+immediately arose and made his way to meet our friends.  A minute later
+we were all mingled in a kind of hand-shaking reel on the piazza.
+
+"Mr. Giddens and I met at the wharf," explained Mr. Furvell; "we were
+both taking a look at our noble river--it's superb in the morning
+sunshine.  So we walked up together."
+
+"Most happy to see you both, I'm sure," said my Aunt Agnes cordially.
+
+"Quite appropriate, I think, that we should hunt in couples," continued
+Mr. Furvell, a significant twinkle in the minister's eye; "we're here
+in different capacities--yet they naturally go together," he enlarged,
+evidently desiring to be questioned.
+
+Everybody waited.  "Miss Helen will understand," he then went on
+facetiously; "you see, I'm here as a preacher, and Mr. Giddens as a
+worshipper," wherewith, much pleased at the success of his little jest,
+Mr. Furvell led the chorus of applause himself.
+
+"Well, if you're as earnest about your part as I am in mine, we've both
+found our proper callings," rejoined Mr. Giddens, making a courtly bow.
+
+"Let's take up the collection," said I, blushing furiously, and not
+knowing what else to say.
+
+"That'll come later," interjected my uncle, winking reverently at the
+pastor.  The pastor seemed to understand right well and took it nothing
+amiss.
+
+My mother's gaze was directed in undisguised admiration upon Charlie.
+And very handsome he looked, I must admit, his face a little flushed by
+the satisfaction of his happy speech, his eyes bright and tender, his
+whole frame lithe and strong with abundant health.  Then, besides, he
+had lovely clothes, even though he was disfigured by two or three
+blazing diamonds, two in his shirt-front, if I remember right, and one
+on the little finger of his left hand.  But I shouldn't complain; for I
+had one brilliant beauty on my own hand--and he was its devoted source.
+
+I think Charlie must have noticed my mother's steadfast gaze.  In any
+case her question came very suddenly, as if to relieve embarrassment:
+"I hope your folks are all well at home, Mr. Giddens."
+
+"Oh, yes, thank you, ma'am," he replied promptly; "they're busy
+preparing for a long trip to Europe--they sail next month."
+
+Whereat my mother quite involuntarily threw a swift glance at me.  And
+I believe, I'm almost sure, that Charlie's eyes followed hers.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Giddens," I broke in, my burning cheeks attesting that it was
+high time, "you don't know who's coming to be our guest to-day--we're
+going to have an elder."
+
+"What on earth's that?" said Charlie, twirling an ebony cane about with
+his fingers.
+
+"Oh, I forgot, you're not a Presbyterian.  It's a man," I elucidated,
+"a kind of an unordained minister.  And he's going to stay here while
+the Presbytery's meeting."
+
+"Are they very solemn?" Charlie enquired; "they sound solemn.  I
+suppose he's about the same thing as we call a warden," for Charlie was
+an Episcopalian.
+
+"A notch higher," ventured Mr. Furvell; "they're in for life.  I fancy
+an elder's more like a bishop than anything you've got in your church."
+
+"And he's going on the bridge deck," I added, pointing upward through
+the porch roof.
+
+"Helen means the attic," explained my Aunt Agnes; "and it does seem too
+bad--but we can't help it without turning everything upside down."
+
+"He'll never notice it," Mr. Giddens remarked assuringly.  "I know in
+Savannah, when we have those church pow-wows, half the householders
+have to sleep in the bath.  Is this bishop from the country?"
+
+"I believe so," informed Mr. Furvell.  "I think the Pollocksville elder
+is to be your man."
+
+"You'll have no end of fun with him," Charlie predicted.  "Those old
+Rubes are great.  I hope you've got your bootjack handy, Mr. Lundy,"
+addressing my uncle; "the old chap will need it sure."
+
+"I'm not reckonin' on much fun with him," Uncle Henry answered dryly;
+"that's not our custom with our guests.  And I haven't got the
+instrument you mention--but I'll pull his boots off myself, if he wants
+any help."
+
+There was just the slightest flush on uncle's cheek; hospitality was a
+sacred thing to him.
+
+"Oh, by the way," broke in Mr. Furvell, willing enough to turn the talk
+into another channel, "I've just had word that we're going to have an
+outsider at the Presbytery.  Dr. Paine notified me to-day that he's
+bringing an intimate friend that's visiting him for a while.  I rather
+think he's from Edinburgh--but I'm not sure of that.  In any case, he's
+a cleric--and one of our own kind.  A young man, I rather think; he
+wants to see something of our Southern life, Dr. Paine's letter said."
+
+"Where's he going to stay?" Aunt Agnes enquired briskly.  My aunt kept
+the census of hosts and visitors for half the town.
+
+"Well, that's just what I was going to speak about," replied the
+minister.  "You see, we'll have to get a place extra for him--unless he
+can be billeted along with Dr. Paine, which I think rather unlikely.
+And, if you all prefer it, I could send the elder somewhere else, and
+give you the foreigner--just as you like, though."
+
+"Whatever you think best," said Aunt Agnes, drawing her chair a little
+closer.  Such problems were the luxuries of life to her.
+
+I know not what impulse prompted me, but I recall, as though it all
+happened yesterday, the quick way I spoke up and said: "I believe we'll
+take the Scotchman--I vote for the clergy."
+
+"You can't," said my mother archly smiling.  "You're not attentive
+enough to them when we have them here--your preference runs too
+distinctly along other lines."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that," said I.  "Anyhow, I'm for the clergy
+this time; I reckon it's the Scotch flavour that catches me--and then
+perhaps he knew Carlyle," for this latter had been long a favourite of
+mine and I had enjoyed many a good thrill--and many a good snooze--over
+his books.
+
+Mother smiled.  "That's a little conceit of my daughter's," she said
+apologetically to our visitors; "she thinks she'll write a book herself
+some day."  Ah me! how little she knew then that my only book would be
+the story of my life, or so much of it as is worth the telling.  And as
+I write the words I wonder if any one will ever really read them--in a
+real book.
+
+"No, I fear he never saw Carlyle," informed Mr. Furvell; "he's too
+young, I fancy.  At least, that's the impression I got."
+
+"Is he married?" Charlie suddenly broke in, holding the ebony cane out
+before him as if in deadly earnest.
+
+"No, he's not--I'm quite sure of that part," the minister answered
+promptly; "for Dr. Paine said I mustn't have him stay where he'd be
+liable to catch any affection of the heart."
+
+"Then don't send him here," cried Charlie Giddens, "for this is the
+danger zone."  And everybody laughed but me.
+
+"But really, speaking seriously, what do you think we'd better do about
+it?" pressed my Aunt Agnes, rising to adjust an awning that had got
+awry.  Mental intensity with some women always runs to domestic
+observation.  "I'd hate to put an Edinburgh minister in the attic," she
+continued thoughtfully.
+
+"The attic hasn't anything to do with it," pronounced Uncle Henry,
+silent hitherto.  "But I say--I say," as he looked around the company,
+"it's going to be the elder.  I've made up my mind to that--I took a
+notion to this Pollocksville elder as soon as I heard of him.  So we'll
+consider that settled, Mr. Furvell, if you please.  I've got a queer
+kind of a notion he's going to do us all good.  When does his train
+arrive, sir?"
+
+"This evening at five," said Mr. Furvell.  "I'll have him driven up to
+the house."
+
+"Thank you, I'll meet the train myself," said my uncle.
+
+"But, Henry," his wife expostulated, "I made an engagement for you for
+that very hour--Judge Burton and his wife are coming to call."
+
+"Can't help it," said my uncle firmly; "not when there's a guest to be
+met.  I'll have to leave them to the ladies," from which resolve my
+aunt knew well no argument could turn him.
+
+It was only a few minutes before our little company broke up when Mr.
+Furvell rose to go.  Charlie took advantage of the confusion to suggest
+that we two should retire to the parlour.  "And you'll sing for me," he
+said.
+
+Half-way along the hall he remarked merrily: "Now's your chance to
+begin your book, dear.  Put your elder in it--and make the Edinburgh
+parson die of a broken heart--and put me somewhere in the introduction."
+
+"Maybe I will," I answered a little defiantly.  "You think I can't
+write, don't you?"
+
+"You could do anything you like with anything--or anybody," he answered
+gallantly; "but don't begin your literary work till we come back from
+Europe," and his voice was all thrilling as he spoke, his eyes ardent
+as they turned on me.  And his hand went out and rested lovingly on
+mine as I turned the music over--for we were now at the piano--and I
+wondered why it was that I didn't lean forward like he did with eager
+outstretched arms.  But I didn't.  Yet he kissed me--then I said I was
+going to sing, as he had asked me, so it was all over in a minute.
+
+"Sing that about the tresses," he whispered, bending over me.  So I did
+as he bade me.  And the words came softly:
+
+  "Still must you call me tender names,
+      Still gently stroke my tresses."
+
+
+But somehow I kept thinking about the elder that was so soon to come.
+I know not why--it was through no will of mine--but the elder would
+take shape before me as about five-and-twenty years of age; and he was
+fair; and his accent was like to that of the Scotch Carlyle; and he had
+a low-crowned hat of felt--and a coat of clerical design.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_AN ALTERNATIVE_
+
+Some things never happen more than once.  And these one never can
+forget.
+
+I remember exactly what I wore that evening; what it was, is of no
+consequence to any one but me.  I have a few fragments of it yet,
+tatters mostly--but their colour never seems to fade.
+
+And I can recall the errand that took me forth.  It was to get some
+cream; for what we had didn't know when it was whipped.  Such was the
+simple mission on which I started out, and I had a little pitcher in my
+hand; even then the days were almost past in which a Southern girl
+thought such a thing beneath her.
+
+I hadn't gone very far when I saw Uncle Henry coming towards me.  He
+was evidently homeward bound, returning from the train.  And there was
+somebody with him; I could see a tall form, clothed in black, beside
+him--and uncle, to my surprise, was carrying a valise.
+
+I don't know why it was, but instantly my pace slackened till I stood
+almost still.  And once I turned and looked back towards the house; I
+think I held the pitcher out in front of me as if I were pointing with
+it.  I really believe I was contemplating a retreat, but just then
+uncle sang out something in his cheery way; this let me know I was
+recognized and expected, whereat I walked calmly on to meet them.
+
+As I came closer I kept my eyes fixed as steadfastly on uncle as though
+I had been looking for him all my life.  I believe I bowed to him as he
+came up; how ridiculous it all seems now.
+
+"Where are you off to, Helen?" he asked, glancing at the jug.
+
+"I'm going to Humphrey's," I said, gazing into the empty pitcher;
+"going for cream--ours at home won't whip."  Then I felt how silly this
+must sound to a stranger.  For I knew, without being told, that this
+was no country elder, and that he had never heard of Pollocksville.
+
+"Let me introduce Mr. Lord," said my uncle, paying no further attention
+to my remark; "the Reverend Mr. Lord--the friend of Dr. Paine's that
+Mr. Furvell told us about.  He's to be our guest.  Mr. Lord, this is my
+niece, Miss Helen Randall."
+
+The stranger lifted his hat--it was a low-crowned felt--and bowed.  His
+bow was deferential enough, but it lacked the Southern touch.  Less
+low, less obeisant, sooner finished.  And he seemed rather surprised
+when I extended my hand--I noticed how firm and strong was his--and he
+didn't bow low again when he took it, as a Southern man would have
+done.  Nor did he hold his hat in his hand while we spoke together;
+this I remarked particularly.
+
+"My name's not Lord, Mr. Lundy," he said with a smile as he turned from
+me; "it's Laird--not a great difference, I'll admit.  Only that's the
+Scotch of it."
+
+"Is that so?" said my uncle interestedly.  "They do sound something
+alike, don't they?  Perhaps I'm further wrong," he went on smilingly;
+"it just occurs to me I should say Dr. Laird.  Are you a doctor, sir?"
+enquired Uncle Henry respectfully.
+
+The other smiled.  "No," he answered slowly, "I'm quite undecorated.
+You see, D.D.'s aren't quite so--so generously distributed," the smile
+widening, "on our side of the water.  You've either got to be very
+brilliant--or very prosy--to get one there."
+
+"I'm sure you're not one of those two," declared my uncle.
+
+"I'd like to know which one," said the stranger; "however, we'll lave
+it go at that, as an Irish friend of mine says.  But anyhow, I'm not a
+doctor--very plain name mine is, Mr. Lundy; just plain Laird, Gordon
+Laird.  Let me carry that bag," he suddenly digressed, reaching for the
+valise; "it's pretty heavy--two or three sermons there, you know."
+
+His offer of assistance was stoutly rejected, as any one who knew Uncle
+Henry could easily have foretold.
+
+I was silent all this time.  But I was busy making notes; and my pen
+flows easily, as if its story were of yesterday, while I record the
+impressions that came so fast and have remained so long.  I recall how
+strange the Scottish voice sounded to me, not harsh and strident as I
+thought all Scottish voices were, but refined and cultured.  The way he
+rolled his "r's" and sounded his final "ings" was in decided contrast
+to our Southern way of slurring the one and mincing the other.  Rather
+pleasing, too, I thought it.  He was tall--taller than uncle--and his
+figure was of athletic build, erect and supple, as if he had given
+himself freely to exercise out-of-doors.  Especially noticeable were
+the shoulders, so broad and so well held back, giving the chest an
+appearance of greater expansion than it really had.  But I think the
+face impressed me most of all.  It was ruddy, as the sea-polished faces
+of those Scotchmen are so apt to be; a strong Scottish face it was,
+serious, almost stern when in repose--all Scotchmen naturally think
+much about Eternity--and yet the lips, thin and mobile, looked as if
+laughter were never far away.  The mouth was really remarkable,
+evidently framed for public speech, although its proximity to a very
+resolute jaw lent it a look of Scottish fixity that really wasn't there
+at all, even if he was the Reverend Gordon Laird.  His forehead was
+high--a little too narrow, I thought, to meet my view of what Carlyle
+would have admired--and evidently harboured much within; for I have a
+theory that foreheads shine if there is anything bright behind them, as
+cathedral windows are lightened by an altar fire.  This high brow lost
+itself in a very comely head of hair; auburn, I must frankly state it
+was, but a very superior kind of auburn, the semi-ruddy wavelets having
+half a mind to curl after a fashion of youthful days.  I verily believe
+they would have curled, had it not been for the close-buttoned vest and
+clerical coat he wore; these canonicals never could have kept their
+dignity in the neighbourhood of kinky hair.  The nose was big, as all
+the best men's noses are.  It stood out in a personal kind of way, like
+an independent promontory; and it had the slightest little terminal
+tilt--it wasn't turned up, it was aspiring.
+
+This, I think, describes fairly well the man who was not an elder and
+had never heard of Pollocksville.  All except the eyes, which deserve a
+separate paragraph.  In fact, there would be no paragraphs and no
+chapters and no literature at all, were it not for the eyes of
+men--women too--and all that lies behind the eyes, all the soul of
+things and the passion of life and the foregleams of Eternity.  Well,
+the eyes of the Reverend Gordon Laird were just such as the Reverend
+Gordon Laird had a right to have.  I'm sure there is no Presbytery in
+Christendom, nor any bishop, nor any other human judge or authority who
+could as well determine just what brand of eyes would match that
+particular name, as could a simple maiden who had never met this
+certain sort of man before.  And I thought the eyes and the name were a
+perfect match.  They--the eyes, I mean--were nearer brown than anything
+else; the kind of eyes that could never be content to be one particular
+hue--they seemed to have got their blend from the sky, which, as
+everybody knows, selects no colour but takes toll of all.  And they
+were frank, so frank and honest--eager, too, inquisitive, in a reverent
+sort of way; penetrating they seemed to be--the more penetrating
+because they were rather veiled--and they looked to be in quest of
+truth, and love, and life.  Yes, life; I think the eyes of the Reverend
+Gordon Laird had more of life in them than any others I have ever
+seen--not bright, or animated, or brilliant, or anything of that sort;
+but life, with all its mystery and loneliness and longing, seemed to
+lie deep in them, like water in a silent well.
+
+The two men went on their way a moment later, uncle swinging the valise
+quite playfully to show how light it was.  "I hope to see you later,"
+said the Reverend Gordon Laird as I started on; "and perhaps I'll be
+introduced to that cream you're going to get," he added, in quite a non
+ministerial way.
+
+"Not till it's whipped," said I, holding the pitcher in both hands.
+
+"That's when it'll be good," replied the cleric, something of the
+moralist in his voice this time.
+
+I had gone but a little way when I suddenly stopped, looked back,
+calculated.  For an idea had come to me--and I knew a short cut home.
+A hasty flight through a neighbour's yard, straight under an old pine
+tree that George Washington was credited with planting, along a narrow
+alley that led to our back garden, would bring me there before those
+deliberate two would have arrived.
+
+Three minutes later I was in the sitting-room, breathless almost.
+"It's a minister," I said, "a young minister--and he's Scotch as
+heather."  I have often wondered since where I got this expression; but
+I believe I heard it from old McLaughlin.  He was the only Scotchman in
+our whole town, and he always wore a shawl to church, and put a penny
+on the plate.
+
+"Who?" said Aunt Agnes and my mother in unison.  They were both in
+black silk, for they knew it was train time.  And my aunt had donned
+two real tortoise-shell combs that came from Tiffany's.
+
+"Our elder," I gasped, standing the pitcher on the mantel; "he isn't an
+elder at all.  He's a minister--with one of those vests that fit around
+the throat like a sweater--the same as the Episcopalians wear--and fair
+hair.  And I ran back to tell you not to put him in the attic," I
+concluded, lifting my eyes heavenward as I spoke.
+
+"A sweater vest and fair hair!" my aunt echoed in mock gravity; "is
+that all he has on?"
+
+"Not put him in the attic?" exclaimed my mother, scornful of merriment
+at such an hour; "why shouldn't we put him there--where would you have
+him put?"
+
+"Any of the rooms," I answered promptly; "my room."
+
+"Mercy, child, we'd have to get all your things out of it and turn
+everything upside down," my mother returned seriously, "and they'll be
+here in a few minutes.  What happened to the elder?"
+
+"I don't know.  I don't remember.  Uncle did say something about why he
+didn't come--I think he's sick, or dead, or something.  But I'm not
+sure.  And we can easily keep Mr. Laird down-stairs till we get things
+changed around.  It wouldn't need much--men never look into drawers and
+closets like women do," I assured them.
+
+"Mr. Laird!" echoed both my auditors almost in chorus.  "Is that his
+name?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "his name's Laird--Gordon Laird."
+
+"Goodness me!" exclaimed my mother, "but you've made good progress.  I
+hope you didn't call him Gordon.  How old is he?"
+
+"I don't know," I retorted, treating the thrust with silence, "and I
+don't care--I don't care anything about him.  You know I'm not much on
+preachers--and anyhow, I'm going to the theatre to-night with Charlie.
+But I took all this trouble for your sakes," I went on in a rather
+injured tone; "I didn't suppose you'd want to coop anybody like him up
+at the top of the house.  But I don't care," I concluded vehemently.
+
+My Aunt Agnes was at the window.  "They're coming," she announced,
+without turning her head.  "Your Uncle Henry certainly should have sent
+Moses for that valise--and he certainly is tall."
+
+Mother by this time was at the window too.  "He isn't any taller than
+Mr. Giddens," she pronounced, after a little silence.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?" I said, a trifle petulantly,
+for they both seemed to have forgotten I was there.
+
+"Really I hardly know," my aunt began reflectively; "it does seem
+hardly the thing to----"
+
+"There's no use talking about it," my mother broke in; "it's too late
+to make any change now.  And anyhow, Henry wouldn't like it, I'm
+sure--he'd think it wasn't fair to the elder."
+
+"Sacred to the memory of the elder from Pollocksville," chanted my aunt
+solemnly.
+
+"All right," I said, reaching towards the mantel for the pitcher, "just
+as you like.  He's not my guest--and I'm going for the cream."
+
+And I reflected as I went--or if I didn't, I have often done so
+since--how full is life of this same proceeding.  Thwarted plans and
+broken promises and disappointed hopes--yet all that remains for us is
+to take up our humdrum tasks again, to pick up our waiting pitcher and
+go our way through some back alley and across some homely yard--for the
+cream.
+
+
+They were still on the porch when I got back.  And Mr. Laird was
+swinging away in one of the big easy chairs, as much at home as if he
+had known us all his life.  His hat was lying on the floor and his hair
+was hardly a bit red in the failing light.  He rose as I came on to the
+porch.
+
+"Did you get the cream?" he asked seriously, as if it were a matter of
+importance.
+
+"Oh, yes," I said, "Lyn's thrashing away at it by this time.  She's our
+cook, you know," I added informatively.
+
+"I'm vastly interested in these darkies," he said as we both sat down.
+"We have very few of them in Edinburgh--the thermometer doesn't agree
+with them.  They're quite a study, aren't they?" pointing as he spoke
+to a sable boy who was carrying a pail across the yard.
+
+"You'll find the life here very different, won't you, sir?" my uncle
+remarked; "but I suppose you hear a great deal, even in Scotland, of
+what's called the 'Nigger problem,' don't you?"
+
+"Yes," returned our visitor, "we're reminded of it rather startlingly
+sometimes--by what we see in the newspapers.  But I suppose such
+despatches--about lynch law, I mean--are decidedly exaggerated."
+
+Uncle's face clouded a little.  "I never saw any of your papers, of
+course," he said; "but I should fancy 'twould be difficult to
+exaggerate much about some things that have happened in the South, sir."
+
+"Then there must be some terrible scenes of brutality," rejoined Mr.
+Laird, looking about the circle in an evident attempt to make the
+conversation general.
+
+"That depends on what you call brutality, sir," my uncle answered, his
+voice suddenly intense, his eyes fixed very earnestly on his guest.
+"We reckon here, sir--all Southern gentlemen reckon--that people who
+have only heard of these things, and who are not--who aren't familiar
+with the situation; we reckon, sir, that they're hardly justified in
+pronouncing an opinion."
+
+I think Aunt Agnes must have scented danger ahead.  In any case she
+suddenly gave the conversation a mighty jerk in another direction.
+"Oh, by the way, Henry," she began, as if it had everything to do with
+the race question, "have you any idea what happened the elder from
+Pollocksville?"
+
+If uncle felt any surprise at the rather violent digression he
+concealed it remarkably well.  "Yes," he answered calmly.  "Mr. Furvell
+got word about him at the last minute.  It seems he has thirteen
+children, and one got lost--you'd think he had enough left, wouldn't
+you?  But he got in quite a fuss about it, and that's why he wasn't
+able to get away.  So we'd have been left without a guest altogether if
+our friend hadn't happened along," and my uncle made a courtly little
+bow in the direction of Mr. Laird.
+
+"Oh, I see," said the latter, evidently very interested.  "I'm an
+alternative then.  Well, I'm here anyhow--and that's the main thing."
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Laird, there was no alternative about it," broke in my
+aunt, "nothing of the sort.  If our elder had come you were to go with
+Dr. Paine to Mrs. Keen's--and then we'd have lost you," smiling very
+sweetly as she spoke.
+
+"Weel," replied Mr. Laird jocosely, "'it's an ill wind that blaws
+naebody guid,' as they say in my country.  If it hadn't been for that
+youngster straying away, I wouldn't have been here.  So I'm an advocate
+of large families from this time on."
+
+"So am I," said my Aunt Agnes.
+
+"But there's a matter in connection with the elder we expected," my
+mother began rather timidly, "and it's something that's troubling us a
+little."
+
+Mr. Laird looked as if he would like to be enlightened.
+
+"And I may just as well tell you now," went on my mother; "it's about
+where we were going to put him--and that's where we have to put you."
+
+"That's the worst of it," ejaculated my Aunt Agnes.
+
+"You see," resumed my mother, "we thought you were going to be an
+elder--and we were going to put him in the attic," the dread tidings
+coming at last with a splash.  "And we do hope you won't mind, Mr.
+Laird--you see if we had ever thought----"
+
+"We won't make any apologies to our guest," my uncle now broke in, his
+tone indicating that he wouldn't object to being heard.  "You're
+welcome as the flowers in May, Mr. Laird--and there's a fireplace in
+your room in the attic.  I may be wrong, but it's always seemed to me
+if a fellow's got a welcome and an open fire, the attic's just as good
+as the parlour."
+
+Mr. Laird looked delighted.  "I'm in love with it already," he
+responded gleefully; "I wouldn't trade it for any room in the house.  I
+couldn't imagine," he went on mirthfully, "what was coming.  I thought
+it must be the dog-kennel, or a dark closet, or a wood-shed; but an
+attic--and a fireplace!  Why, bless my heart, there's nothing in the
+world I love like an attic--secluded, lofty, roomy--it's the best place
+in the house.  Let us see it now."
+
+"Where's Moses?" said my uncle; "he'll take your valise up for you.
+It's plain, but it's comfortable, Mr. Laird.  And if you like it,
+there's just one way I want you to show it."
+
+"And what might that be?" asked our visitor.
+
+"Don't be in any hurry about leaving," said my uncle with serious air.
+
+"No, we'll think you don't like it if you are," chimed in my aunt.
+
+"Where's Moses?" asked uncle again.
+
+"I don't know where Moses is," said the Reverend Gordon Laird, his face
+as sober as a judge, "but one thing I do know--I've heard of Southern
+hospitality, and the half was never told."
+
+Uncle bowed; Aunt Agnes smiled graciously.  As for me, I had
+disappeared.
+
+"What have you been up to now?  You certainly did get out of the way in
+a hurry--you've been up to the attic yourself, haven't you, now?" for
+mother saw that I was flurried and out of breath when I returned.
+
+It was a little while before I owned up.  But I reckoned they'd find
+out sooner or later anyhow.  "Well," I said at last, "yes, if you will
+know.  I ran up and put my silver toilet set on the dresser--it helped
+ever so much to make things look decent.  And I took up those roses
+from the library--they make the whole room look different."
+
+"Those roses!" my mother echoed; "why, child, Mr. Giddens sent you
+those roses just this morning--they're American beauties, Helen."
+
+"I know it," I answered calmly, "so they'll be something new--to him.
+Besides, there's some respect due a clergyman from Edinburgh."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_THE GLINT OF THE HEATHER_
+
+Charlie dropped in for supper that evening.  I don't remember whether
+or not he was specially invited and it doesn't matter.  He came while
+everybody except myself was in the last stages of preparation for the
+evening meal; I was in the hall as he came in.
+
+The first thing that caught his eye--after me--was the clerical hat
+that hung between two of uncle's broad-rimmed grays.  He put it on and
+made very merry over it.  It was decidedly too large for him too; as
+soon as he noticed that, he tipped it jauntily to the back of his
+head--even then it looked big.  The Reverend Gordon's attic was
+certainly the best room in his bodily edifice.
+
+"Your elder didn't turn up?" said Charlie.
+
+"No, he didn't come."
+
+"And you got the clergyman?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Up-stairs right now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In the attic?"
+
+"That's where he is."
+
+Charlie returned the hat to its peg.  Then he took off his overcoat,
+disclosing a faultless evening dress, for the theatre was our objective
+point that night.
+
+"What kind of a cove is this parson?" he enquired carelessly.
+
+"He's about your age," said I.
+
+"Nice?"
+
+"Uncle thinks so," I answered cautiously.
+
+"How does your mother like him--has she looked him over?"
+
+"I really don't know--he's only been here an hour or two.  You
+certainly do look nice to-night, Charlie."
+
+"How long is this cleric going to stay?" he pursued.
+
+"I don't know.  I heard uncle telling him to stay as long as he could."
+
+"What denomination is he?"
+
+"Belongs to the true church," said I.
+
+"I thought Mr. Furvell said he was Presbyterian."
+
+"So he is--he's from Edinburgh.  And he's vastly interested in the
+darkies.  They don't grow 'em over there, it seems.  He got on pretty
+thin ice with uncle--they were talking the nigger problem."
+
+"They must have been hard up for conversation," said Mr. Giddens, with
+a little curl of the lip.
+
+"But they weren't," I protested; "he's a splendid talker--hush, there
+he's coming now," as I heard a footfall on the stair.  "Come and meet
+him."
+
+I introduced the two men to each other.  They stood talking a little in
+the hall--and I watched them while I listened.  Charlie was in full
+dress, as I have said, with diamond accompaniment; Mr. Laird was in his
+clericals.  They stood close together, chatting very pleasantly; I
+thought I had never seen two finer types of men, both strong and
+straight and tall--though Charlie wasn't quite so tall.  The Southerner
+had the keenest face, I thought, bright and animated, with eager,
+penetrating eyes, and his whole bearing was that of a high-minded and
+successful man of the world.  They were discussing "futures" at the
+time, I think, suggested doubtless by preliminary remarks about the
+weather and the prospect of the cotton crop.  I know I was surprised to
+observe that the Reverend Gordon Laird was by no means ignorant of the
+subject; strange subject, too, when you come to think of it--_futures_,
+which comprise a great deal more than cotton!
+
+Perhaps Charlie had the keener face, as I have said, but there was more
+of insight in Mr. Laird's.  His were the more wistful eyes, as if they
+were looking for something not to be found on the surface.  And really,
+of the two, the Scotchman seemed to be doing the most of the
+inspecting; I mean, by that, that Charlie didn't appear to have the
+slightest chance to patronize him, as business men are so apt to do
+with clergymen.  For the minister, his clerical coat and collar to the
+contrary notwithstanding, impressed one as having a certain order of
+business that was just as important as the other's; and he seemed to
+pride himself on it, too, in a reserved sort of way.  In fact, I should
+hardly say this at all, since I don't know exactly how I could defend
+it--but there was an undefinable something about him that made one feel
+Mr. Laird reckoned his work quite as necessary to the world's good as
+that of any prosperous business man, even of a wealthy ship-owner from
+Savannah.
+
+"Have you been long in our country, sir?" Mr. Giddens took advantage of
+the first pause to enquire.
+
+"No," said the other.  "I'm quite a tenderfoot--it's only two weeks
+since I landed at New York.  I came straight South to see Dr. Paine; he
+took a post-graduate session in Edinburgh, and I met him there.  We
+scraped up quite a friendship--and that's how I came to visit him."
+
+"Do you sail from New York, returning, Mr. Laird?" I ventured, thinking
+I ought to bear some part in the conversation.
+
+"That's all very uncertain," he answered thoughtfully; "I've been in
+communication with the Colonial Committee; and it's just possible I may
+take work in Canada.  They're sorely in need of men there, it seems."
+
+"It's a wonderful country," pronounced Charlie; "I spent a week once
+between Montreal and Quebec.  There's untold wealth in Canada, if it
+were only exploited."
+
+"That's what I have heard," said Mr. Laird; "and I'd like to lend a
+hand," he added quietly, the earnestness of his eyes interpreting his
+words.  But Charlie evidently did not understand him.
+
+"You mean in the way of investment, sir?"
+
+"Yes," said the Reverend Gordon Laird; "yes, I guess that's it--yes,
+investment."
+
+This somewhat enigmatical conversation was terminated by the advent of
+the other members of the family, all quite ready for the supper that
+was waiting.  And a decidedly animated circle it was that surrounded
+our well-laden board.  Uncle was in fine spirits, as he ever was when
+he had congenial company, and the honours of his attention were pretty
+evenly divided between the Scotchman and the Southerner.
+
+It was delightful to watch the interest and surprise of our clerical
+guest, so new and different did everything appear to him.  For our dear
+Southland has fashions all its own, each one of them more delicious
+than another.  Perhaps this is especially true of what we eat, and of
+how we go about it.  We had a coloured boy with a long feather fan
+whose duty it was to guard us from the flies.  This amused him vastly;
+especially once when my aunt motioned him to look--the dusky Washington
+was almost asleep, leaning against the wall.  And so many of our dishes
+seemed to strike the foreigner as the newest and most palatable things
+on earth.  We had the savoury rock in little fish-shaped dishes--they
+looked all ready to swim--and sweet potatoes and corn bread and fried
+chicken, and hot biscuits too, and a lot of other things Scotchmen
+never see.  It was lovely to watch Aunt Agnes' face, brightening with
+every recurring exclamation of surprise or pleasure from our visitor.
+
+On the other hand he was hardly less interesting to us.  A really new
+type is something to which a little Southern town is seldom treated--we
+are so fearfully native-born.  And Gordon Laird (the Reverend can't be
+always used) seemed to bring with him the flavour of the world without.
+His accent was so different, as I have said; and many of his terms were
+so unfamiliar to us.  For instance, we soon remarked that he referred
+to the Episcopal church as the Church of England; and once or twice he
+spoke of the "Kirk Session," which had to be explained; and he rarely
+used the term "pastor," or "preacher," as we did--it was always
+"minister" with him.  It was most interesting, too, to hear him talk of
+Edinburgh, of its castle, its Holyrood, its Princes Street, its Scott's
+monument, its haunts of Knox and memories of Burns.
+
+"Fo' de Lawd, Miss Helen, dat new preacher, he's got a heap o'
+learnin'," Lyddie said one day, "an' he knows how to let it out, dat's
+sho'."
+
+That very first night, that first supper, I mean, found us all
+listening with great intentness to his description of much we had
+hardly ever heard of before.  I remember he spoke of higher criticism,
+giving the names of two or three great Scottish scholars, and he seemed
+a little disappointed to find we had never heard of the latter and but
+little more than heard of the former.  He spoke, it seemed to me, as if
+this higher criticism were a matter of great importance, almost as if
+it were troubling his own soul--but this I did not understand till long
+after.
+
+The discussion ran so steadily along church lines that even Charlie,
+who was not very strong on matters ecclesiastical, contributed a
+question.
+
+"What church does your Queen belong to, Mr. Laird?" he asked.
+
+"To the Presbyterian," replied our guest, looking very candidly at the
+questioner; "when she is in Scotland, that is."
+
+"Oh," said Charlie, "I always thought she belonged to the State church."
+
+"So she does," replied the other, "and that is the State church of
+Scotland."
+
+"Miss Helen thinks that's fine," broke in my uncle.  "I'm sure her
+far-off ancestors must have been Scotch Presbyterians, Mr. Laird.
+She's a regular Puritan--in theory."
+
+"Then you'll be going to the service at the opening of Presbytery
+to-night, Miss Randall," said Mr. Laird, turning to me.
+
+I was silent, not knowing just what to say.  Yet I felt that uncle's
+statement was quite just all the time.  For, ever since a child, I had
+had a kind of passionate devotion to the church of my fathers; yet it
+is only fair to add that if there was one girl in all our town who
+would not have been called religious, who would, in fact, have been
+called a gay society girl--what a poor garish definition that seems to
+me now!--I was that very one.
+
+"What her uncle says about Helen reminds me of something I must tell
+you, Mr. Laird," began my mother, breaking the silence that had
+followed his rather pointed question.  "I always taught her the Shorter
+Catechism when she was a little girl--made her learn it, at least--and
+one Sunday afternoon I was following her around the yard trying to get
+her to answer what is Sanctification; well, she suddenly turned to me,
+and what do you think she said?"
+
+"Couldn't imagine, I'm sure," answered Mr. Laird.
+
+"'What's the use, mother,' she said, 'of teaching me all this--when
+perhaps I won't marry a Presbyterian at all?'"
+
+"All the more need of it then," replied our guest amid the laugh that
+followed; "it won't be wasted anyhow, whoever the lucky man may be.
+It's wonderful how that catechism stays with you, when once it gets in
+the blood.  I learned it on the hills of Scotland," he went on, his
+deep eyes brightening as if the memory gave him joy, "and I hardly ever
+wander now in wild or lonely regions without its great words coming
+back to me.  They go well together, I always think--they're both lofty."
+
+"On the hills?" echoed Mr. Giddens, who had never lived outside the
+city; "did your father send you there to learn it?--pretty hard lines,
+I should say."
+
+"Oh, no," Mr. Laird answered simply, "my work lay there.  I used to
+take care of sheep on the hills--I was a herd laddie, as they call them
+in Scotland.  My father is a shepherd."
+
+I felt, rather than saw, the consternation that came on every face.
+
+"What did you say about your father?" my uncle asked involuntarily,
+looking up impulsively from his plate.  Now, uncle was a gentleman, if
+ever one was born, but this intimation fairly swept him off his feet.
+"You were speaking about your father, were you not?" he amended,
+thinking the question more delicate in this form.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Laird, evidently quite unconscious of having caused a
+sensation.  "I was saying my father is a shepherd.  He takes care,
+along with other herds, of the gentlemen's flocks in Scotland--in
+Midlothian.  The shepherd gets so many sheep for himself each
+year--that's part of his hire, you see."
+
+"Yes, yes, I see," rejoined my uncle.  "Have some more of the
+ice-cream, Mr. Laird.  Washington, pass the ice-cream to the
+gentleman."  It was funny, had it not been so real, to see uncle's
+consternation.  This was something new to my patrician relative.
+
+"Do let me help you to a little more of this chocolate cake," broke in
+my aunt.
+
+"And your coffee cup is empty," added my mother.  Both showed the
+sudden perturbation that had laid hold of uncle, for which the only
+outlet was this sudden freshet of hospitality.
+
+"No, thank you," our guest answered quietly, "I've had quite
+enough--you Southerners would soon kill a man with kindness.  Yes," he
+went on, resuming the interrupted theme, "the catechism goes well with
+the shepherd's crook; if there's any one calling in the world that's
+been productive of plain living and high thinking, it's the shepherd's."
+
+"Half of that programme appeals to me," laughed Charlie Giddens,
+helping himself generously to the chocolate cake.  "I'm afraid I'd make
+a poor shepherd."  Charlie seemed unable to keep his eyes from Mr.
+Laird's face; this candour of biography was quite beyond him.
+
+"But it's a fact," our Scotch visitor went on quite earnestly; "it's
+wonderful the difference there has been, as a class, between the
+shepherds and the ploughmen, in Scotland.  The shepherds have been so
+much superior; their eyes were constantly lifted to the hills, you see,
+and the others had to keep theirs on the ground.  Besides, their work
+developed a sense of responsibility--and it took a tender man to make a
+good shepherd.  Oh, yes, the shepherds of Scotland have been a noble
+race of men."
+
+"And your father is still living in Scotland?" enquired my mother from
+across the table.
+
+"Yes," he answered; "yes, he's still living."
+
+"That's a phase of life we haven't been privileged to see," my uncle
+remarked, concluding quite a lengthy silence; "indeed, we haven't seen
+anything of your Scottish life at all.  I have often thought I'd love
+especially to see Edinburgh."
+
+"I'd sooner see the shepherds on the hills," cried I.  "I'd love to see
+the heather--and the mists rolling back over the mountains, like I've
+read about in Scott."
+
+"Have you never been to the old world, Miss Helen?" our guest enquired
+of me.
+
+"No, never," I replied; "I've never been from under the stars and
+stripes."
+
+"But she's contemplating a European trip, Mr. Laird," Mr. Giddens broke
+in, looking very knowingly at me.
+
+"Yes," chimed my mother, a playful smile lurking about her mouth,
+"perhaps you'll meet over there before very long."
+
+Mr. Laird turned and looked at me.  I know my face betrayed me.  But if
+he put two and two together he didn't give us the result.  "I hope
+you'll bring your mother with you when you come," was all he said.
+
+"But Mrs. Randall's a poor sailor," quoth Charlie Giddens.
+
+"So am I," was my remark.
+
+"Then you must choose a fair-weather season for your voyage," pressed
+Charlie, maintaining an excellent gravity.
+
+"But you can't always tell," said I.  "Often the storms don't come till
+you get out to sea."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_THE GLORY OF THEIR STRENGTH_
+
+We went to the theatre that night, Charlie and I, as we had arranged.
+But one-half of us didn't enjoy it very much.  The play was a light,
+frivolous thing, and I so defined it to Charlie before the second act
+was through.
+
+"I thought you liked the gay and festive sort," he said; "I do believe
+this preachers' convocation is having a depressing influence on you,"
+which remark I resented not a little; whatever my weaknesses were, I
+knew susceptibility to the clergy was not one of them.
+
+"Nothing of the sort," I retorted; "but the thing isn't true to
+life--life was never one long cackle like that.  Besides, they haven't
+any fire on, and it's cold--and I'm going home after the next act."
+
+Which I did, sure enough, and took Charlie with me.  Our seats were
+near the front; and I must confess I did enjoy our procession down the
+aisle.  I could see the looks of admiration on every hand--of envy,
+too, from some maidenly and matronly eyes.
+
+Charlie was so tall and straight and handsome, and had such an original
+head of hair.  Besides, most of our townspeople knew he was an
+aristocrat--our little city made a specialty of aristocracy--and
+absolutely all of them knew that he was rich.  The darkies had a good
+deal to do with this, I fancy.  My admirer had come from far away, from
+a city, too, and all the sons of Ham invest the stranger from a
+distance with the glory of wealth untold.  But white folks aren't so
+very different after all; it's a very odd sort of girl that doesn't
+take some satisfaction out of these far-travelled pilgrims that come
+hundreds of miles, and stay several days at the best hotel, just to
+worship at her feet.  A local sweetheart is all very well in his
+way--but the whole town doesn't know when he comes.  Besides, it's so
+convenient for the local to pay his homage that it may mean very much
+or very little.  But when a lover comes across a couple of states,
+leaving behind him a big city--and all the girls that are sorry to see
+him go, that's the best of it--that is something else, as we used to
+say in the South.  It means his temperature must be about a hundred and
+twenty in the shade, as I have heard Uncle Henry say many a time.
+
+Yes, I was proud enough of Charlie as we walked the full length of the
+theatre that night, he keeping close behind and carrying my white opera
+cloak on his arm.  I remember an old maid--and they are the best
+authority on such matters--telling me that Charlie had a very caressing
+way of carrying a cloak, as if it were a sacred thing.  I have thought
+quite a little over this, and I believe there's something in it.
+
+I cannot say I was sorry when I heard voices in the library as we came
+in the house.  And that's a bad sign when a girl's in love.  There
+should be no such music to a love-lorn pair as dead silence in the
+library when they come home through the dark.  When the poet sang of
+voices of the night I'm sure he meant just two.
+
+The Presbytery meeting was evidently over, for they were all home, Mr.
+Furvell among them.  Now I should have said at the outset that Mr.
+Furvell, although he was our pastor and much beloved at that, was
+really quite a Puritan of a man.  And I was sure, as soon as he shook
+hands with me that night, that he was concerned about my soul.
+
+"Did you enjoy the play, Miss Helen?" he said, looking as solemnly at
+me as though I had spent the evening where Dives was when he asked for
+a drop of water to cool his tongue.
+
+"No," said I, "it was a fool play," whereat Mr. Furvell looked a little
+comforted.
+
+"We had a beautiful service at the Presbytery," he went on, his
+solemnity but little diluted; "the Lord was with us, Miss Helen," with
+an intonation that implied a monopoly.  "You'd have been more profited
+if you had been there.  Don't you think so, Mr. Laird?"
+
+I fancy none of us learned much from our visitor's reply.  Whatever it
+was, it was quite evasive; but I remember that he looked at me instead
+of his questioner--and I felt a little rising anger that my own
+minister should have put me in this light before a stranger.  He would
+have found out what a frivolous heathen I was quite soon enough, I
+thought, without any assistance of this kind from Mr. Furvell.  The
+conversation seemed to flag a little after this, and it wasn't very
+long till Charlie and I slipped off into the library.  I didn't slip as
+cheerfully as Charlie.  And he hadn't got more than well begun upon a
+general criticism of Mr. Laird before uncle knocked at the door--uncle
+was a very cautious man--"We're going to have prayers; will you and Mr.
+Giddens come in to worship?"
+
+Charlie gave a little gasp.  "We're at our devotions right now
+ourselves," he said, so low that uncle could not hear.  Then we had a
+swift little debate.  I was for prayers, and Charlie said he believed
+they had brought that whole Presbytery together just to convert me.
+Which, I retorted, would be like training all the guns of the American
+navy on one little house fly.
+
+Anyhow, we went in--even Charlie couldn't have done anything else--and
+the Reverend Gordon Laird had the Bible in his hand.
+
+"Do you sing?" he suddenly enquired, looking up from the book.
+
+"Who?" asked my Aunt Agnes, quite amazed.
+
+"Oh!  I mean, do you have singing at family worship?  It's a very
+common custom in Scotland--they usually go together."
+
+Of course we had never heard of such a thing.  In fact, family worship
+in any form was one of the dainties we kept for visitors--if they were
+able to help themselves.
+
+So Mr. Laird spoke a few words about their Scottish Psalmody--I had
+never heard the term before--and he said there were no hymns to touch
+them, for strength and grandeur.  I consider this epoch-making, in a
+certain sense; for the psalms of David have been the songs in the house
+of my pilgrimage for long years now.
+
+Suddenly uncle asked him to sing one for us.  He seemed quite willing,
+and we all listened eagerly; except Charlie, who thought, I fancied,
+that it was a waste of precious time.
+
+I love to sit and think again of that wonderful experience.  Uncle was
+there, and my Aunt Agnes, and my precious mother; my promised husband,
+too, was of the little company.  I can see again the look of
+expectation, surprise, and almost wonder as the young minister, with
+serious mien, sang us one of the psalms of his native land.  He chose
+the eighty-ninth--I know them nearly all by number now.  Our visitor's
+voice was not so cultured as some I have heard, but it was clear and
+sweet, and his ear was true,--and, best of all, his whole soul seemed
+to be in the great words as they rose slowly from his lips.  The words
+are so noble that I must write them out.
+
+  "Oh! greatly blessed the people are
+    The joyful sound that know--
+  In brightness of Thy face, oh, Lord,
+    They ever on shall go.
+
+  "They in Thy name shall all the day
+    Rejoice exceedingly
+  And in Thy righteousness shall they
+    Exalted be on high."
+
+So ran the mighty song.  But I think we felt the grandeur of it most
+when he sang the next two lines:
+
+  "Because the glory of their strength
+    Doth only stand in Thee,"
+
+which impressed me then, and still impresses me, as the most majestic
+union of words I ever heard in any form of religious song.
+
+"That's wonderful!" said my mother as the psalm was finished.
+
+"Beautiful!" contributed my uncle; "sounds like it ought to be sung by
+a race of giants."
+
+"So it was," said Mr. Laird.  "The martyrs have sung those
+words--hundreds of them.  That psalm was a favourite with the
+Covenanters."
+
+"The what?" interjected Mr. Giddens.  "The Covenanters, did you say?
+Who were they?"
+
+"The Covenanters," replied Mr. Laird.  "And I consider that's the
+greatest name ever given to a band of men."
+
+"Were they a religious sect?" asked Charlie.
+
+"No, sir--they were a religious army," answered Mr. Laird.  "And I've
+got their blood in my veins.  Some of my ancestors laid down their
+lives for their faith--and this world never saw an aristocracy like to
+them."  His cheeks were flushed, his whole face animated with a
+wonderful light--and he looked really beautiful.  Never shall I forget
+the expression on the faces round me; they didn't know what to make of
+this so unfamiliar kind of man.
+
+But Charlie was not through with the subject yet.  "Well, that kind of
+thing may have suited them," he began again, "and there certainly is a
+kind of strength about it.  But I don't like it as well as our church
+hymns," he continued, smiling.
+
+"I didn't think you would," replied the minister, not smiling at all.
+
+Then Mr. Laird took the Bible and went on with worship.  He first read
+a bit from the Scriptures, though what part it was I cannot remember.
+After that he prayed.  A beautiful, simple prayer--I thought it was so
+manly, though that's a strange word to apply to a prayer.  But he never
+did think, as I came to know well enough later on, that God cares to
+have us abase ourselves just for the sake of doing so.  Strangely
+enough, the only one thing I definitely remember about his prayer is
+that he said: "Give us a good night's rest," and it struck me as a
+beautifully simple petition.
+
+There is one feature of that evening's worship that lingers with me
+very vividly.  After we knelt down--his chair was a few feet from
+mine--Charlie crept over to the sofa where I was kneeling and bowed
+down beside me.  It thrilled me so--perhaps not in terms of Charlie
+Giddens exactly--but it was the first time I ever thought of love and
+prayer going together.  And I recall how overpoweringly it came to me
+that there could, surely, be nothing more sweet than this, that two who
+loved each other should pray together, and should feel that even death
+could never separate them, because their love was set in the light of
+the Invisible.  Charlie took my hand, too, and I rather think his eyes
+were open--I know his face was turned to mine--but I couldn't be sure
+of this, for my own were tightly closed.
+
+I went outside the door with Charlie after he had said good-night to
+all but me; and I do not think the silent night ever appeared so
+glorious before.  There was no moon, but the stars were shining calmly
+overhead, and a sweet stillness, fragrant with the breath of spring,
+was all about us.  I could hear the twittering of birds in the magnolia
+tree, and wondered if they were the love-lorn pair I had seen taking
+shelter there.
+
+I fancy I was still thinking of the great words and the great thoughts
+of the swelling psalm, but Charlie seemed to have forgotten all about
+it.  He evidently didn't want anything but me.  And his voice was full
+of tender passion as he began and pressed his suit again--right away,
+he said, it must be right away.  And he rang the changes a little on
+the yacht and Europe--I wished so much he hadn't mentioned these, for I
+felt, in a kind of hungry way, that they had nothing to do with the
+real case.  He told me how much he loved me, and how empty life would
+be without me at his side--but this was in between, and I felt, away
+down in my heart, that he wasn't putting things in their proper places.
+But he put his arm about me, and kissed me, three or four times, I
+think.  And then he tried again to make me promise--but I wouldn't.
+
+"When we go abroad, we'll go and see where that parson used to herd the
+sheep," he said, and laughed.  "It's a wonder he didn't bring his
+collie with him, isn't it?" and I felt my cheeks burn with resentment
+at the jest.  But I didn't let him see it--for I felt I had no right to
+resent it.  Besides, he had herded sheep on the hills--he said so
+himself--and that was the worst of it.  I thought something like that
+then, at least, poor fool.
+
+"Let me see its light again," said Charlie, taking my hand and looking
+at my engagement ring; "it makes the whole night radiant, doesn't it?"
+with which he kissed it, and held it to my lips that I might do the
+same.  I couldn't help glancing proudly at it, too, for it was a
+beauty--and mother said no girl of our circle had ever had one so
+valuable.
+
+Then Charlie went away and I went back into the parlour.  They were all
+there except Mr. Laird.
+
+"Well, I took him to the attic myself," said my Aunt Agnes, "and it was
+right amusing to see how he went on over it.  I had told Lyn to light
+the fire, and it really looked cozy in the dark when we went in.  He
+said it was a room fit for a king--said he felt sorry for the elder.
+Oh! he was just lovely about it."
+
+My mother's mind was engrossed with something else.  "Wasn't that
+mortifying at the table," she began, "about his having been a shepherd,
+I mean--he doesn't understand our way of looking at things here, or
+he'd never have mentioned it.  I saw Mr. Giddens fairly jump in his
+chair."
+
+"I thought it was lovely," I broke in with a vehemence I could not
+restrain; "I don't see any disgrace in that.  I think it's all the more
+to his credit."
+
+"Oh! no, of course, I don't mean it's any disgrace," my mother
+exclaimed, "but--it's so funny.  It's so different from anything we've
+been used to."
+
+"You're right there," said my uncle, rising and moving towards the gas
+jet, for he was sleepy.  "That's the truth all right--he's different
+enough from what we usually see.  I think he's refreshing, if you ask
+me.  But he had better go slow about expressing his views on these
+niggers--if he doesn't want to get into trouble.  That's one thing
+sure."
+
+"I wish he had told us a little more about his folks," said my Aunt
+Agnes, yawning, and winding up her watch.  "Did you notice he didn't
+tell us anything about his father, except that he was a shepherd--that
+he _is_ a shepherd," she revised, "for he's still living.  I do wonder
+if he's engaged," she added, placing the screen in front of the fire as
+she spoke.
+
+"Of course," said I; "certainly he's engaged."
+
+"How could you know?" queried my mother instantly.
+
+"Well, of course, I don't--but why shouldn't he be?"
+
+No argument could avail against this very easily, and the matter stood
+as before.
+
+"Oh!" my uncle suddenly exclaimed, his hand upon the chandelier, "I
+forgot to give him this letter--Mr. Furvell gave it to me for him at
+the church; it was sent on in care of Dr. Paine.  But he can get it in
+the morning," as he deposited it on the mantel.
+
+I promptly crossed the room and picked it up.
+
+"You inquisitive old maid!" said my mother in mild reproach.  "Aren't
+you ashamed of yourself?" as I stood examining the missive.
+
+"I wanted to see what the old country stamp is like," I answered
+calmly, my eyes still on the envelope.  Aunt Agnes was looking over my
+shoulder in an instant.
+
+"It's a man's handwriting," said she.
+
+"Oh!" I said, "yes, I reckon it is."
+
+"And it's got Virginia spelled with two n's," she added sorrowfully.
+
+"You don't mean to say so!" said my mother, moving over to join us.
+
+"The more the merrier," said my uncle; "and I'm going to put out the
+gas, if it had a dozen.  All aboard for the upper deck."
+
+Wherewith we all moved towards the stairs.  "The last I saw of your
+Gordon Laird," said my aunt to me as we went up together, "he was
+standing with his face hidden in those roses."
+
+"Oh!" said I, "did you tell him who it was took them to his room?"
+
+"No, never thought of it."
+
+"I'm so glad," said I--with a little sigh.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_"DEALINGS WITH THE SAMARITANS"_
+
+There's something lovely about having a lovely time.  Now I know that
+looks like a very foolish sentence when one reads it over after having
+written it down.  So many sentences are like that; you think they're
+strong, beautiful, full of meaning and bright with fancy, while you're
+getting them out--then they appear so pale and thin when you look them
+over.  They're like the fish that you're playing in the water: "What a
+whopper," you say, "I've got this time!"--but how thin and small when
+it lies panting on the grass.
+
+Yet I venture to repeat, as Mr. Furvell says in his sermons, I venture
+to repeat: there's something lovely about having a lovely time.  In
+this, I mean, that it can never be taken away from you.  There will,
+you know, be cold, dark days, and bitter disappointments, and burning
+tears, and emptiness of heart, till you quite forget that ever you were
+glad.  But, even so, all these can never rob you of that one hour, or
+day, or month of pleasure unalloyed.
+
+Mr. Laird used to say something like this in the long happy days that
+followed his arrival.  It had not been hard to persuade him to prolong
+his visit.  Fortunately for us, his friend Dr. Paine was engaged to go,
+the very next week, to the meeting of the General Assembly at Dallas;
+so it was arranged Mr. Laird should tarry with us till he returned,
+perhaps longer--for I think it was about decided that he was to take up
+mission work in Canada.
+
+When I say those days were happy, I mean in a perfectly sane and
+unfeverish kind of way, of course, with no thought of--of what every
+woman looks for in every book she reads.  That is, no calm and
+courageous thought of it; although I shouldn't wonder if something of
+that, more or less diluted, lies back of all real joy.  Anyhow, Mr.
+Laird said that very thing, and more than once, about the
+unloseableness of one hour or day of real happiness.  Whatever has been
+before of pain, or whatever may be ahead of sorrow, he said, neither
+the one nor the other can ever make pure gladness as if it had never
+been.  It belongs to you forever, said the Reverend Gordon Laird.
+
+I should have known that I had no right to be so happy.  For one thing,
+Charlie had gone back to Savannah, and I should have been miserable
+over that, if conscience had been half as faithful as it should have
+been.  Then, besides, he was waiting for my decision about Europe and
+the yacht--and I had no claim to happiness till that was settled.  And,
+most of all, I wasn't sure about my love for him--very far from it--and
+so I should have been quite wretched.
+
+But I wasn't.  I was shamefully happy.  We were all happy, I think, to
+see our visitor so thoroughly delighted with everything about him.
+After all is said and done, American people take it as a compliment
+when old-country folks seem to like them.  I don't think we ever
+forget, even the most democratic of us, that they have dukes and lords
+across the sea.  And Mr. Laird did seem so perfectly happy.  For one
+thing, the weather was delightful, and morning after morning found him
+and me--there was no one else to act as cicerone--walking or driving
+about the lovely haunts that surrounded our quiet little city.
+Everything was in the glory of bud and blossom; fragrance was wafted on
+every breeze; the wistaria and the yellow jasmine were gathered from a
+thousand trees.  Sometimes we had picnics too, making our way on our
+asthmatic little launch up the winding river; sometimes we went
+together to the oyster market at the wharf, where he seemed to be quite
+enchanted with the negroes' singing.  "On the other side of Jordan," I
+remember, was a great favourite of his, and he used to get them to sing
+it again and again.
+
+Indeed, everything connected with negroes seemed to have a strange
+fascination for Mr. Laird.  This perplexed me considerably, and
+mortified me not a little too.  Of course, having spent all my life
+among them, they were a commonplace lot to me, and I regarded them with
+the kindly disdain which marks every Southern girl's attitude to the
+negro race.  But Mr. Laird seemed to find a new vein in them--and,
+besides, he was so intensely human and so tremendously interested in
+all human things.  But he didn't know how volcanic was the ground he
+walked on when he came into contact with the darkies; and I may as well
+go aside here to tell how this provided the only jarring note in all
+that memorable visit.
+
+One day we were all on the piazza, engaged in that most delightful
+occupation of waiting for dinner to be announced, catching savoury
+whiffs the while that betokened its near approach.  All of a sudden a
+coal-black negress came through the back gate and stood at the foot of
+the porch steps.  Beside her stood a little curly-headed boy, about
+three years of age, clinging to his mother's hand.  She had been asking
+for something at the kitchen door, I think--they were always asking for
+something, those darkies.  Of course we simply looked at her; I don't
+believe uncle quite did that--I think he pretended to be reading a
+newspaper.  But Mr. Laird, in his impulsive way, went right down the
+steps and began talking to the woman.  It was really aggravating to see
+how flattered she seemed to be by his attention.  And then, to our
+horror--clergyman as he was and in full ministerial dress--Mr. Laird
+actually took that pickaninny up, and flung him onto his shoulder,
+pretending to be a horse or something of that sort.  And the little
+negro dug his hands into Mr. Laird's ruddy locks, while his Anglo-Saxon
+steed made an exhibition of himself, galloping once or twice around the
+flower bed.  The mother grinned with delight in a way that I knew
+fairly maddened uncle.
+
+When Mr. Laird finally returned, panting, to his chair, uncle had quite
+a time controlling himself to speak.
+
+"Do you know who that child is, sir?" said my uncle, keeping his voice
+under fine control.
+
+"No," said Mr. Laird, innocent of everything; "no, I never saw him
+before--do you, Mr. Lundy?"
+
+Uncle threw his newspaper on the floor without a word.  Mr. Laird,
+still all unconscious, meekly stooped and picked it up.  "I guess I'd
+better go and fix my hair before dinner," he said, running his fingers
+through the startled thatch.
+
+"You'd better wash your hands, sir," said my uncle sternly, oblivious
+to muttered appeals from both Aunt Agnes and my mother; "I'll tell you
+who that child is, sir--it's a coon."
+
+"What?" said Mr. Laird, beginning to apprehend.
+
+"It's a coon, sir," my uncle repeated, as sternly as if he had been
+defining some cub of the jungle; "it's a nigger coon."
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Laird, looking uncle very steadfastly in the eye.
+
+"Well," echoed my uncle, "yes, well."  Then he paused, but soon
+gathered fresh strength.  "And I hardly need to tell you, I presume,
+sir, that it's not our custom to fondle darkey babies--they're supposed
+to soil white hands, sir," he declared, waxing warm.
+
+Mr. Laird looked innocently at his own.  "It hasn't injured mine any,
+Mr. Lundy," he said simply.  "I don't quite understand what caused
+the--the panic," he concluded, still looking very steadfastly at uncle.
+
+"Well, then, sir, I may as well tell you plainly that such an action as
+yours would be considered quite--quite improper, to say the least.  We
+don't take familiarities like that with negro children."
+
+"It's a harmless enough looking little chap," responded Mr. Laird,
+nodding towards the receding youngster.  He was toddling along beside
+his mother, his hand in hers.
+
+"They're harmless enough while you keep them in their place, sir,"
+retorted my uncle.  "But you must know that our people down here have
+their own way of doing that.  And you don't understand the situation,
+sir, you don't understand the situation," repeated Uncle Henry,
+employing the favourite formula of the South.  "For instance, I heard
+you express surprise at something the other day.  You remember when
+Smallwood, the rector of the Coloured Episcopal Church, called to ask
+Mrs. Lundy for a subscription--you seemed horrified that he went to the
+back door, because he was a preacher and dressed up like a bishop."
+
+Mr. Laird nodded.
+
+"Well, sir, if he was the Archbishop of Canterbury--or the Pope of
+Rome--the back door's the place for him--so long as that's the colour
+of his skin.  There isn't a self-respecting white family in the city
+but would shut the front door in his face.  You understand, sir?"
+
+"I don't think any more of them for that," was the quiet retort of Mr.
+Laird.
+
+"That may be, sir.  They'll stand your contempt, sir--but they won't
+let a pack of negroes walk all over 'em," my uncle's gorge rising
+again.  "And I hope to God none of our neighbours saw you on the gallop
+round our back yard with a negro brat astride of you.  You'd be
+finished here, sir, if they did.  Just before that wench came in here
+with her young 'un, I was going to tell you that I met Mr. Furvell, and
+he asked me to give you an invitation, for him, to preach in our church
+next Sunday.  Well, sir, I hope it'll stand all right--but if it got
+round town that you made a saddle-horse out of yourself for a nigger
+whelp to ride, you'd have the church to yourself, sir; I reckon a few
+old women might go to hear you, but you wouldn't have enough men there
+to take up the collection."
+
+"I can't do it, Mr. Lundy," said the minister, with amazing quietness.
+
+"Can't do what?" demanded uncle.
+
+"Can't preach for your friend," replied the other.  "I'm engaged."
+
+"Engaged for what?"
+
+"Engaged to preach."
+
+"Where?" said uncle, quite forgetful now of the debate.  I think the
+same question came in the same breath from my mother and Aunt Agnes.
+
+"In the Coloured Methodist Church--I think they call it Zion," Mr.
+Laird informed us calmly.  "I was there the other day at a
+funeral--pretty boisterous funeral it was, too--and the preacher got
+hold of me.  They took up a collection," Mr. Laird laughed, "and that
+was how they located me.  I didn't have anything but a shilling--a
+quarter, you call it.  Well, he invited me to preach for him next
+Sabbath, and I agreed.  So I won't be able to oblige Mr. Furvell."
+
+"You agreed, sir?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Lundy, I agreed," repeated the stoical Scotchman.
+
+"Good God!" said my Uncle Henry.  My uncle was not a profane man--but
+this was something extra.
+
+"Don't get excited, Henry, don't," began my mother; "Mr. Laird can
+easily change all that--he can get released from his engagement.  He
+didn't know we wanted him in our church."
+
+"I'm not excited, ma'am," puffed my uncle; "I was never calmer in my
+life--but the thing's preposterous, madam.  It's utterly absurd--it's
+ridiculous."
+
+"Yes, yes," broke in my Aunt Agnes, "of course, it's the easiest thing
+in the world to arrange.  All Mr. Laird has to do is to explain to that
+coloured preacher that----"
+
+"But I can't," interrupted Mr. Laird; "that is, I won't."  The word
+fell strangely on the ears of Southern ladies.  "I gave him my
+promise--and that's the end of it.  I'll preach in Zion Church--or
+whatever they call it--next Sabbath morning.  If the Lord will," he
+added, with what appeared to us all quite superfluous piety.  I didn't
+know then that Scotch people never take any chances.
+
+"But you don't realize what you're doing, sir," remonstrated my uncle;
+"you fail to realize----"
+
+"I'm doing what no man will prevent," broke in our visitor, and his eye
+was flashing like the diamond on my finger; "I'm going to preach the
+Gospel to them, if I get the chance."
+
+"That's all right," began my uncle, "that's all right in its way,
+but----"
+
+"What's all right in its way?" demanded the Reverend Gordon Laird, his
+voice quite resounding now.
+
+"That's all right--that Gospel business," explained my uncle, evidently
+a little at a loss.  "The Gospel's all right in its place, but----
+
+"Thank you," gave back Mr. Laird, his strong Scotch lip trembling,
+"you're very magnanimous, sir."
+
+"But you don't know what you're exposing yourself to," pursued my
+uncle, apparently deaf to Mr. Laird's retort.  "They'll make a fool of
+you in the pulpit, sir.  I'll tell you something, sir.  Your sermon
+will be wasted.  We had a man here once--a white man--an evangelist,
+who expected to move on anyhow.  And he tried this little trick of
+yours--he preached to those coons in their own church one day.  And I
+heard later how they made a fool of him.  He preached about folks
+having to use the means.  Good sermon, too, sir.  But he was no sooner
+through than the nigger preacher got up after him--and he said he'd
+give them a little illustration.  Then he told them a ribald yarn, sir,
+right in the church; said he and his ten-year-old brother were in bed
+once, and they heard their mother telling their father of some
+devilment they'd been up to; and the father said he'd go up-stairs when
+he had finished his supper.  Well, this nigger preacher went on to say
+he got up to pray--but his brother--his brother believed in using the
+means; and so he said he wouldn't pray, but he'd get up and put
+something on.  That's what he told them, sir--an indecent tale--and the
+white preacher had to sit and hear it," concluded my uncle, his cheeks
+burning with indignation.
+
+"I won't give the black brother a chance to illustrate," said Mr. Laird
+stolidly; "I'll close the service when I'm through."  Then he laughed.
+
+"You're trifling with me, sir," said my Uncle Henry chokingly, rising
+as he spoke.  I saw the quick pallor come to the cheek of my Aunt
+Agnes; as for my mother, she was fairly trembling.  As for me--well, I
+was terrified.
+
+But just at this crisis a remarkable thing occurred.  Mr. Laird didn't
+seem to notice my uncle's movement at all.  Indeed, he was not looking
+in his direction, but sat gazing intently out towards the road that ran
+down to the river and the bridge.  Involuntarily my eyes followed his,
+and a moment sufficed to reveal the object of his interest.  For down
+the road towards us there crept a fragile figure, swaying unsteadily,
+overborne with weakness and her heavy load.  This too was a negro
+woman, but cast in finer mould than the stalwart black who had
+disappeared from view.  The one who had just hove in sight, as I could
+see even at that distance, was a comely creature, more white than
+black, but yet bearing the fatal hue.
+
+She was heavy laden, as I have implied.  One arm bore a great bundle
+enclosed in a white sheet--laundry, doubtless--while on the other she
+carried a plump and complacent infant, crowing as it came, in that fine
+oblivion of weight which marks the procession of the heaviest babies
+everywhere.  The young mother was pressing towards the river; a rusty
+skiff lay beside the bridge, in which, no doubt, she was to make her
+way to the negro settlement on the farther shore.  She seemed ready to
+faint from the fatigue of her double burden, yet she pressed on with
+almost rapid steps, as if she must keep up till she reached the boat.
+
+It was this that had attracted the attention of Mr. Laird, so rapt in
+observance that he evidently did not mark my uncle's movements.  For
+the latter had hardly risen before our visitor sprang quickly to his
+feet--I can see him now, the tall black-robed figure, with high brow
+and auburn hair--and strode down swiftly towards the road.  Another
+moment brought him alongside of the exhausted negress, whose white eyes
+could be seen wearily surveying him as he approached.  Without a word
+he seized both burdens from her arms, the baby held high aloft as he
+led the way down to the boat.  The mother straightened herself and
+followed closely, as if she had taken a new lease of life--it was not
+all due to the burdens she had lost, I'm sure--and the heavy baby
+crowed with delight at this improved style of locomotion.  When,
+lo--_miserabile dictu!_ as I learned in Virgil--this second pickaninny,
+with that tonsorial instinct which seems to mark the race, plunged its
+pudgy fingers where those of its predecessor had held high revel one
+brief half hour agone, squealing for very joy as it clutched the auburn
+mane of the Reverend Gordon Laird.
+
+"Don't that beat the--the Dutch?" muttered my Uncle Henry from the
+porch, gazing at the tall and supple form, the now laughing and half
+boyish face, as our guest strode on towards the river, the baby and the
+bale like feathers in his arms.  A funny smile was on uncle's face,
+half of contempt, half of admiration.  "Those two brats both into his
+hair!" he murmured to himself--"and I sure enough got into his wool,"
+as the grin deepened on his face.
+
+He stood gazing.  Then, recalling his sacred principles, he broke out
+anew: "Good heavens, he's going over to Slabtown with her," for our
+undaunted guest had by this time landed the bale in the bow of the
+skiff.  Still holding the baby high, he took the woman's hand and
+helped her over the gunwale into the boat.  A moment later we could see
+his shirt-sleeves glistening in the sun, he himself seated in the
+middle of the skiff, starting to pull vigorously for the other shore.
+
+"Let him go," said my uncle between his teeth; "he's chosen his company
+and he can have it.  By heavens," he went on hotly, "I was never so
+insulted in my life.  What the--the dickens kind of a man is this
+Scotchman anyhow?--I've seen men shot for less than this.  I remember
+once in Texas----"
+
+"But, Henry," ventured my Aunt Agnes, "you shouldn't be so hard on
+him--he doesn't understand our----"
+
+"Then why the devil doesn't he keep his mouth shut?" snorted my uncle;
+"comin' down here--like those infernal Yankees--an' tryin' to teach us
+how to run our niggers.  I've seen men reach for their hip pockets for
+less'n that," declared my uncle, glaring round the circle.
+
+"Now, now, Henry," said my mother gently, "that'll do, Henry.  You're
+not much of an assassin--you know that.  Besides, you can't help
+admiring his pluck, can you, now?"
+
+"He's too ---- plucky," muttered Uncle Henry, gazing at the now distant
+boat.  Then followed a season of calm, broken only by the soft voices
+of my aunt and mother as they tried to pour oil on the troubled waters.
+
+"And what do you say?  What's your opinion of your Gordon Laird--and
+his nigger friends?" uncle suddenly demanded, turning on me as stern an
+eye as dear old uncle could ever treat me to.  I had not yet spoken.
+
+"Do you want to know?" said I, straightening up.
+
+"That's what I asked you for--what makes you so white?"
+
+"I don't know.  But I think he's glorious--just glorious," I said,
+looking very straight at uncle.  "And I don't care who knows it," I
+added.  I believe I stood up as I spoke--and I could feel my eyes
+flashing.  "And you were horrid to him," I cried, my voice trembling.
+
+"Helen," my mother broke in reproachfully, "you forget yourself, Helen.
+And do you know you're taking up with a stranger, against your uncle?"
+
+But the latter didn't seem to hear what my mother said.  He was staring
+at me in a way that let me know the battle was won.  He was a true
+Southerner, was uncle, and if anything in the world appealed to him, it
+was courage.  Yet he had by no means surrendered.
+
+"Then you can meet him when he comes back," he said slowly in a minute,
+nodding towards the river; "you can meet him and say good-bye for the
+rest of us.  You'll make our farewells to him, you see.  And tell him
+the world is wide--you can remember that, can't you, Helen?"
+
+I smiled up into uncle's face.  "I won't say good-bye for anybody but
+Helen Randall," I replied, speaking just as slowly as he had done, "but
+I'll do that--if I have to.  And I'll tell him--I'll tell him," I
+repeated, gazing down the sunlit river towards the sea, "that the world
+isn't so wide after all."  And I know not why, but a strange thrill
+swept over me from head to foot; for the day was beautiful, and the
+fleecy clouds were overhead, and the air was laden with the sweet
+breath of flowers, and God's sunlight was on the river--and the river
+flowed on in silence to the sea.
+
+Uncle Henry turned away and presently began a little pace up and down
+the piazza.  Fragments of the storm could still be heard: "Preach the
+Gospel, indeed--act as assistant to a nigger.  A pretty pass, when our
+guests turn nurse for darkey coons--the attic's too small for him now,"
+as he crossed and recrossed the porch's sounding floor.
+
+Presently he stopped and looked out over the river.  The rest of us did
+not need to look--we had been watching all the time.  And, away at the
+end of the long bridge--it was one of the longest in the state, nearly
+a mile--we could just descry the moving figure, all in black again, of
+our returning guest.  He was coming back afoot, leaving the skiff to
+its owners.
+
+Aunt Agnes took advantage of a long silence on uncle's part.  "Well,"
+she said, "I guess I'll order dinner served; we can't wait any longer."
+
+"That's what I say," agreed my mother; "we may just as well go
+on--it'll be better anyhow," she added significantly.
+
+"What?" said my Uncle Henry, turning round and looking at us.
+
+"We were just saying we wouldn't wait dinner any longer," was the
+explanation, "and anyhow, 'twould be better to go on--ourselves.
+Considering everything, you know," and my Aunt Agnes sighed.
+
+Uncle stopped still and straightened himself up.  "There'll be no
+dinner till he comes," he said firmly, "if it's an hour.  I hope I
+don't forget what's due to a guest," as he looked gravely round the
+circle, "and especially a stranger in a strange land."  This was said
+with the air of a king and a very noble king at that.
+
+"Call Lyn," he said suddenly to me.
+
+I did so.  "Where are those niggers anyhow?" he asked impatiently as he
+waited for her to appear.  "I reckon they've all been watching the
+procession," jerking his thumb towards the river.  "Oh, here she is,"
+as the sable attendant pattered onto the porch.  "Lyn, make me a
+mint-julep--make it good."
+
+"Yes, sah!" said the vanishing servant.
+
+"Lyn!  Oh, Lyn," he called again in an instant.
+
+"Yes, sah; heah I is, sah!"
+
+"Make two mint-juleps--and make them both good."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_LOVE'S TUTORSHIP_
+
+But those were happy days, as I have said already.  Neither of us knew,
+I fancy, whence came the silent music that was slowly gathering in our
+hearts.  But it was there, even though it came in secret strains,
+neither recognizing, neither declaring.  Of course, I was an engaged
+girl--and I was trying to live up to it.  I flaunted Charlie's ring,
+sometimes; and I often wrote to him, sitting in the very same room with
+Mr. Laird the while, at my own little desk in the corner.  This itself
+had been one of Charlie's Christmas presents.  And I kept Charlie's
+letters in the tiny drawer in the top, but I had so often been careless
+about it that mother saw to it herself that it was kept securely
+locked; I knew where the key was secreted--on the ledge above the
+library door.  Mother said I really ought to carry it on a little gold
+chain around my neck; but I had no chain--and I never could bear to
+have things concealed about my person.  Mother never glanced at his
+letters, of course--but I sometimes used to show her bits of mine after
+I had written them, and mother would suggest a word here and there, a
+little tenderer than the original, and I would stick them in like plums
+in a pudding.  Indeed--I may as well tell it--mother rewrote a part of
+the one in which I kind of finally renounced any immediate prospect of
+Europe and the yacht.  She said no member of our family had ever been
+so gifted with the pen as I--but that I was a little astray on the
+facts.  So she fixed my letter in a way to prevent it being very
+final--for she said if it was ordained that I should go even yet, it
+would be wrong to make it impossible.  I fancied at the time that this
+was a little like lending omnipotence a hand--but mother was an
+old-time Calvinist, especially on the subject of me and Charlie, so I
+presumed it must be all right to have it as she said.
+
+I don't think any of them, and mother least of all, ever fancied that
+Mr. Laird had the remotest connection with my engagement to Charlie.
+For he was a minister--and that itself would be supposed to settle it
+as far as I was concerned.  Besides, he was a minister without a
+church, a kind of free lance on a holiday.  Then, too, we knew he was
+poor; he never said so, but there are always certain signs; and he took
+great care of his clothes, and seemed very cautious about money, except
+when he came across some one who was very poor.  And I'm sure we all
+remembered, though we almost never spoke of it, that he had been a
+shepherd, and that his father was still keeping sheep on the hills of
+Scotland--it never seemed to embarrass him a bit to refer to this,
+which we all thought very strange.
+
+Then, on the other hand, we hadn't the slightest reason--for a long
+time at least--to think he cared a single thing for me.  Indeed, I was
+just a little piqued about this; one evening I took some fresh flowers
+to his room in the attic, and his diary was lying open on the table.  I
+don't know why--I have no excuses to make at all--but my eye fell on
+the entry for the first day or two he had been with us.  I only glanced
+at it--any girl would, I think--to see what he said about us.  And I
+found references to uncle, and my mother, and Aunt Agnes--even to Lyn
+and Moses more than once--but not a single word about me.  I didn't
+care a straw--only I had a good mind to take the violets down-stairs
+with me again.  But I didn't.
+
+I have always fancied I would have been a good deal more interested if
+I had thought he was engaged.  But I soon made up my mind he wasn't,
+although I had declared so stoutly to the contrary.  For he never
+seemed to want to be alone, especially in the twilight--and that's a
+sure sign; and he left all his letters lying around after he had
+written them; and when he sang, which he did very nicely, he preferred
+"Scots Wha' Ha'e" to "Annie Laurie"; and he was never melancholy, and
+never sighed--and he never asked the price of things you need for
+house-keeping.  So all these signs convinced me thoroughly.
+
+I have already said he didn't seem to care a thing for me.  And
+yet--and yet!  For one thing, he loved to hear me sing--and he taught
+me two or three of the old psalms that were in a leather-bound book he
+brought down-stairs one day.  Then he seemed so happy when I said I
+thought them beautiful.  And he talked with me so gently and reasonably
+about the darkey question that I finally came to admit he did right in
+preaching in that coloured church.  And I wondered why he cared for
+what I thought at all.  Besides all this, he tried to get my promise
+that I would take a class in the Sunday-school after he was gone--and I
+remember the gray kind of feeling I had inside of me when he spoke of
+going away.  I wouldn't promise, for I was about as fit to teach a
+class as I was to be President of the United States--but I promised to
+help in the library.
+
+By and by, though I can't tell how, we even came to speaking about
+Charlie.  And he praised him, said he was such a clever business man,
+and handsome.  I didn't think much of that; but one evening, when we
+were sitting on the shore all alone, he said he thought an engagement
+was such a sacred thing--and he urged me, in a veiled kind of way,
+always to be true to Charlie.  And it was then I began to know--any
+true girl would know there was something, when he talked like that.
+
+And it was through that--that kind of conversation, I mean--that it all
+came about.  Because, by and by, I actually told him all about my
+misgivings and my fears.  Of course I did it all loyally enough--I
+always praised Charlie, and always said I knew we'd likely be so happy
+because he was, already--and I would try to be.  And I told him one day
+how Charlie was still urging me to consent that it should be soon,
+right away soon--and any one would have thought, if they watched his
+expression, that he was very concerned for Charlie's interests.  For a
+strange paleness came upon his face when he broke a silence that seemed
+rather long, I fancy, to both of us.
+
+"I think you should," he said, but his voice was so strange that I
+wondered where all his strength had gone to.
+
+"What makes you say that?" I replied, and I don't believe my own voice
+was quite natural.
+
+"Because I think you'd be happier," he answered--"and I want you to be
+happy."  Then, for the first time, he looked at me, and his wonderful
+eyes were filled with a kind of yearning such as I never saw before.
+So different, indeed, from the look in Charlie's eyes, though nobody
+surely ever yearned more earnestly than Charlie.
+
+"I'm about as happy now," I answered, "as any girl could hope to be."
+
+He looked at me enquiringly, and I thought the paleness was deeper than
+before.
+
+"Just like I am, I mean," I hastened to enlarge, "with a lovely house,
+and having a lovely time--and uncle and aunt and mother all so good to
+me."
+
+"It isn't the same," he said.
+
+"The same as what?" I pressed, knowing I should not.  But I remember
+yet the thrill of peril and pain and joy that accompanied the words.
+
+"The same as love--real love," he answered slowly.  "It isn't the same
+at all--the other is a new life altogether.  That's what makes life
+holy--and beautiful," he said, his voice so low I could scarcely hear.
+"That's the whole of life--every bit of it," he added softly.
+
+I answered never a word.  And in a moment he went on.  "Yes, that's my
+highest wish for you, Miss Helen--that you may find a sphere worthy of
+you.  For you'll forgive me, won't you, when I say you haven't found it
+yet?  You've got a wonderful nature," he suddenly startled me with,
+"and you've got gifts and qualities that can be so useful, so
+wonderfully useful--and they can give you such deep happiness too," he
+went earnestly on, "if they only get a chance--if you only give them a
+chance; if they're developed, I mean.  And nothing will ever ripen them
+but--but that."
+
+"But what?" murmured I, who knew right well.
+
+"But love," he answered gently.  "No woman's life ever really ripens
+except through love.  And--forgive me again, but I must say it--you're
+not getting the most out of life, living as you are now, Miss Helen."
+
+I looked at him searchingly.  "As I am now?" I echoed.  "Why, what kind
+of life do you think I'm living?"  But even as I spoke the words my own
+poor heart provided all the answer.  I felt rising up within me a
+conception, not adequate or full, but quite sufficient at the time, of
+the hollowness and barrenness of the poor frivolous life I was living.
+And I knew, oh, so well, how far from the well-spring of real joy and
+peace were the glittering streams at which I had sipped so long.
+
+"What do you mean?" I urged, for he had not spoken.
+
+"Oh," he began slowly, "I guess you know.  Nobody can have a nature
+like yours without knowing when it's not being satisfied.  You have no
+work--no calling, I mean.  And you don't have any recreation, except
+only pleasure--a little party here, and a picnic there, a card party
+yonder, and an afternoon tea somewhere else.  You know what I mean--all
+those things--and a nature like yours can't live on confections," he
+added, smiling.  "That's why I'll be glad--when the other happens."
+
+"What other?" repeated I, who knew right well again.
+
+"You know," he said; and the great eyes looked solemnly and wistfully
+into-mine.
+
+"Do you mean when I marry Mr. Giddens?" said I, dwelling on the words,
+my eyes never taken from his face.
+
+"Yes," he said; "that's what I mean."  And his own eyes never flinched,
+although I could see the pallor deepen on his face.  And I rejoiced,
+though I honestly believe I scarce knew why.
+
+"What difference would--would that make?" I asked, looking away.
+
+"It would fill your life," he answered quietly, "fill your life to
+overflowing."
+
+"But I wouldn't give up those things even then--card-playing and
+dancing and everything like that.  I've always done those things--and I
+love them, Mr. Laird.  You don't understand me, I'm afraid.  You see,
+your life has been a very different one from mine, hasn't it?"
+
+"Wide as the poles asunder," he answered without looking at me.  "I
+never knew any of those things.  Yes, very different," he repeated.
+And he smiled.
+
+"Your parents are very religious people, I suppose?" I ventured.
+
+"My mother's not living," he said in a hushed voice.  "She died when I
+was ten."
+
+"And your father?" I asked in a burst of boldness.
+
+"Yes," he said.  We were sitting by the river at the time, and the sun
+was setting, and its last rays bathed the trees with amber light.  His
+head was lying on the ground; and the dying sun shed its beauty on the
+wavy hair and the wonderfully modulated face.  Modulated is the fitting
+word, for various voices spoke through the different features, yet the
+master note was tenderness, always so lovable in a man when it is
+joined to strength.
+
+"I'd love to be religious," I said suddenly.  "I believe I would have
+been, too, if I'd been a man."
+
+He smiled.  "Why would you like to be religious?" he said, picking up a
+pebble and throwing it far out into the river.  "You've just said you
+love those other things so much."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know I did.  But I mean what I say, just the same.  I
+admire that sort of people," I went on enthusiastically; "religious
+people, you know.  Really good people--like you," I broke out
+recklessly.  "I knew an awfully religious girl in Richmond once.  She
+was naturally good, no struggle for her at all.  Well, she married a
+minister,"--I laughed as I said it--"and nearly all her friends pity
+her so.  She and her husband live in the country, and he takes care of
+his own horse--he has three stations.  But I never pitied her," I
+declared earnestly; "I think it must be a perfectly lovely life--when
+your heart's in it.  She loves him to distraction--and his work too;
+and she visits the people, and she teaches in the Sunday-school.
+Besides, she has two children--and I think he preaches all his sermons
+at her on Saturday nights and she fixes them up.  But then, of course,
+she's fitted for that sort of thing--she can pray out loud," I
+concluded, nodding my head towards Mr. Laird as though this were the
+acme of all eulogy.
+
+"There are better kinds of prayer than that," he answered, smiling
+again; "and I'm so glad you don't pity her," he added, turning his
+earnest eyes on me again.
+
+"Why?" I could not help enquiring.
+
+"Because I was afraid you would," he said meaningly--"and she doesn't
+need it.  Where two hearts are in love with each other and their
+work--I wouldn't ask any higher heaven than that."  Then he sighed;
+although, as I have said, he wasn't much given to sighing.
+
+Then came my question.  For days I had been burning to ask it; yet I
+marvel that I was ever bold enough to form the words.
+
+"You talk like a specialist on that subject.  Were you ever in love,
+Mr. Laird?"  I shot the words out quickly; otherwise they never would
+have come.
+
+He turned with swift movement and looked at me.  It seemed to me he
+looked me over from head to foot, though I knew he wouldn't do anything
+so rude.  The paleness was all gone now, I noticed, and I thought his
+lip trembled a little.  It was a moment before he spoke.
+
+"You've been very kind in giving me your confidence, haven't you, Miss
+Helen?" he asked, very gravely and slowly.
+
+I stammered out my answer.  "Forgive me, Mr. Laird," I began
+penitently; "I had no right to say what I did.  And if I've told you
+anything about--about me and Charlie--it was only because it seemed
+easy to do it--because I wanted to.  Because I trusted you," I added,
+wishing some one would suddenly appear.
+
+But no one did, and Mr. Laird seemed so dreadfully calm.  I was
+waiting, intending to say something more, when he went serenely on.
+
+"Well, I can trust you, too," he said; "and it seems easy to tell you.
+And, anyhow, I don't know why I shouldn't.  Yes, I was in love once,
+long ago.  And I was engaged to be married," he continued, in that same
+tone of reverence with which he always spoke of matters such as this.
+"But it's long ago now--it was while I was in my second year in the
+university.  And I had to give her up"--he smiled as he turned his eyes
+on mine--"had to give her up for another man.  Her father, like mine,
+was a shepherd, and she was bright as a sunbeam and as pure as the
+dewdrop in the dell--that's a line from an old Scotch song," he
+interjected, smiling rather more broadly than I thought he should have
+done in mid-narrative of a tragedy like that.  "But a fellow came home
+from across the sea--from Australia--and he was very rich."
+
+"Did she give you up for him?" I asked, indignation in my voice.
+
+"Not exactly," he answered; "but it amounted to that.  She wrote and
+asked me to release her; said she had found she loved him best."
+
+"And you gave her up?"
+
+"Certainly," he said, and I thought what a magnificent man he was;
+"yes, what else could I do?  Or what else could she do?"
+
+"Didn't you hate her?"
+
+"No, of course not--I think she did perfectly right.  Anything else
+would have been false to both of us.  And they got married very soon
+after--they have three bairns now," and I wondered how he could smile
+such a happy kind of smile.
+
+"And do you think," I said, "do you think any girl would be justified
+in changing--if she found--if she found she loved somebody else?"
+
+"Yes," he answered slowly.  "Yes, I think she would.  But she has no
+right to find out anything of the sort--I would never find it out," he
+concluded firmly.
+
+"You wouldn't?--why wouldn't you?"
+
+"Because I shouldn't," he said; "that's why I wouldn't--if I loved, I'd
+love always."
+
+"Would you have loved _her_ always?" I asked, wondering at my rashness.
+
+"Yes," he said after a pause; "yes, if she had let me.  Do you know, I
+believe it's getting chilly--shall we go home?"
+
+To which proposal I gave swift assent--outwardly, at least.  And as we
+walked along I marvelled at the restraint of the strong man beside me.
+I knew, or felt, rather, that his heart was a molten mass of fire--I
+couldn't have told why, but its burning heat was just as real to me as
+anything could be.  I knew it was aflame; but he was as reserved, and
+cold, and strong, and silent as though we had been talking of something
+that had nothing to do with human hearts at all.  I hated myself for
+the weakness I could not conceal.  And I fairly loathed that Scotch
+girl who married the rich Australian--and I hoped all her children had
+flaming red hair, like I felt sure she had.
+
+That same night I was chatting a while with uncle before he went to bed.
+
+"And what is your majesty going to decide about Savannah--and the royal
+yacht--and Europe?" he suddenly enquired, after our talk had run a
+little on a kindred vein.
+
+"I'm not going," I declared vehemently; "at least, not for a long
+time--I simply can't."
+
+"I wouldn't either," he said meaningly, "if I were you--you'll be a
+fool if you do."
+
+"Why?" demanded I.
+
+"I reckon you know," said uncle; "if you don't, I won't tell you.  And
+I don't blame you, honey.  I think he's a true blue sort of chap--but
+he'll have to revise his views about the niggers."
+
+Well, the result of the whole thing was this, that I spent a good half
+hour posting my diary that night.  I too had begun a diary by this
+time--and I, too, took good care whose name shouldn't go into it.  And
+the outcome of my half hour's pondering was this brief entry: "Have
+made up my mind that I can't marry Charlie--and I shall never, never
+marry the Reverend Gordon Laird."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_THE RIVER LEADING TO THE SEA_
+
+If there is one thing a girl loves more than another, it's being a
+martyr.  If there is any such thing as sweet sorrow, that's where it
+may be found.  And of all kinds of martyrdom the love kind is the
+sweetest.  Now in all this a woman is so different from a man.  A man
+enjoys the suffering that comes with love--if some one else does the
+suffering; but a woman glories in it--if some one else does the loving.
+And that was pretty much my case.
+
+For I was having lots of love--from Charlie.  This was all very well so
+far as it went; nor can it be denied that it went a considerable way.
+For every girl prizes a strong man's love, though she return it never
+so faintly.  Like some preachers, she highly esteems a call--even if
+she has little or no thought of accepting it.  But there is nothing,
+nothing in all the world, so troublesome as love; unless it utterly
+swamps you--then is the solution simple.  But to have just enough to
+marry on, with no surplus for the years--that's dreadful.  That is like
+launching some mighty ship when the tide is out--and it must be awful
+to hear the keel grating on the sand.
+
+Yes, that's where the martydom comes in, to recall the noble word with
+which I began the chapter.  And when the Judgment Day shall
+dawn--concerning which I have no doubt, but much misgiving--the most
+oft-repeated charge against our poor weak womanhood will be that we
+sold ourselves for nought.  Some of our loveliest will be the first to
+learn, in that great day, how deadly was the barter of their
+bodies--and of so much more.  I have often heard uncle say that when a
+horse is sold its halter always goes along--but no one ever told me
+that when a girl sells her body, that sale includes the soul.
+Reluctant, protesting, even horrified, it yet must cleave to its
+tenement of clay and meet the tenant's doom.  And what a doom! if it be
+fitting destiny for those who have bartered the sanctity of life, some
+for bread, some for home, some for gold, some for fame, some for
+earthly station; and some, nobler these, for very hungriness of heart,
+crying out for the nameless something that shall satisfy the soul.
+
+I hardly know just how or when I resigned myself to such a martyrdom.
+But I did.  I decided to marry Charlie, right soon too--despite the
+defiant vow I had registered in my diary that night.  One thing I'm
+sure of--and that is, that Europe and the yacht had mighty little to do
+with it.  But whether it was because I feared Charlie might throw
+himself from the deck of the aforesaid yacht if I didn't marry him; or
+whether I felt it was a matter of honour; or whether I knew it would
+throw mother's life into eclipse; or whether I agreed with that
+semi-intelligent philosopher who once said that all life was a gamble
+in probabilities, or something of that sort, I cannot say.  But anyhow,
+one midnight hour, I drew my pen through the first half of that diary
+vow, the part which declared I could never marry Charlie, and I left
+uninjured the savage promise to myself that I would never, never marry
+the Reverend Gordon Laird.
+
+Besides, he had been horrid.  Not in any positive sense, of course, for
+Mr. Laird was such a perfect gentleman.  And yet he was a gentleman
+after a fashion I had never seen before.  He was not in the least like
+our Southern gallants; he couldn't bow like them, nor make pretty
+speeches--and he wouldn't jump across the floor to pick up my
+handkerchief, though I once saw him give Dinah a hand up the back steps
+with a heavy block of ice that had slipped from her grasp and fallen to
+the bottom.  And he never brought me flowers, or candies, except some
+wild violets he might sometimes pluck--and once he did give me some
+molasses taffy, of which his reverence himself partook with almost
+juvenile enthusiasm.
+
+But he was scrupulously polite, and that's so hard for a girl to stand
+if she's interested in a man at all.  And he seemed so strong, and
+self-possessed, that he was distant without meaning to be--the distance
+of a sort of superiority, all the worse because you knew he wasn't
+trying to make you realize it at all; and I had the intolerable feeling
+that his world was an altogether different one from mine, and that he
+was interested in things I didn't know about, yet which I felt might be
+just as much mine as his if I only had a chance.  As it was, however, I
+was a good deal like a child standing knee high to some man whose face
+was half hidden by the telescope to his eye; if he knew you were there
+at all, you felt the very most he'd do would be to pat your head and
+ask you if you'd lost your ball.
+
+I don't know what finally decided me.  But anyhow I wrote Charlie a
+letter, and told him Yes.  "Yes, right away," was the burden of what I
+said, "as soon as I can get ready."  I thought at the time what a cruel
+term that was, "getting ready"--as if the milliner and dressmaker had
+any part to play in that.  All the world I would have given to have
+known how to really "get ready" in my inmost heart and life.  But I
+wrote the letter, and sealed it, and kissed it on the outside--which I
+felt was the proper thing to do--and then I placed it in the Bible on
+my dressing-table, taking quite a pious satisfaction in the fancy.
+Then I sat down and cried till my eyes were sore and the Bible all
+stained with bitter tears.  Later on, I told my mother; her joy was
+quite enough for two, quite too much for me.
+
+And I told Mr. Laird too.  Some will ask why, and perhaps make merry
+over that delicate reserve which Southern women pride themselves upon.
+But let them ask, and let them make merry as they will.  Besides, I had
+already told Mr. Laird so much that it was surely natural enough for me
+to tell him this.  Moreover, was he not a minister--and what are they
+for if not to be confided in?
+
+So I told him I was going to post a letter.  It was the gathering dusk,
+for such a letter should never sure be launched in the garish light of
+day.  Then I told him what was in it, or, at least, told him enough to
+let him know; for he was remarkably "quick in the uptake," to adopt a
+phrase of his own countrymen; I think I referred, too, to his own
+counsel in the matter.
+
+He didn't speak for a little, nor could I see his face.  But when he
+did break the silence, it was to say he'd walk to the post-office with
+me; he added that the exercise would do him good, since he hadn't had
+much of an appetite for supper--which was, I thought, one of the
+shabbiest speeches he could have framed.  But I let him come.
+
+"Why not row down?" he suddenly suggested as we came to the bend in the
+road beside the river.  Our boat-house, its door wide open, was at the
+water's edge.  "We can land within a square of the office," he enlarged.
+
+I should have refused, I know; for the letter to Charlie was in my
+hand.  But I didn't.  And I remember yet the sense of sweet
+helplessness I felt as he turned and led the way to the boat-house.  It
+all comes back to me again.  I stand once more alone, outside, while
+the tall form disappeared within the low-roofed house.  The sound of
+pushing and rolling I hear again as the boat emerged slowly from its
+home.  The rattle of oars comes back, idly rolling to and fro in the
+rocking skiff; the metallic chink as they were being adjusted in the
+iron sockets; and the lapping waves, and the soft breath of evening,
+and the distant noises of the drowsy town.  I remember, too, that there
+was neither moon nor star, the sky all veiled with the gentle haze that
+often marks our Southern spring.  He rowed; and I sat in the armchair
+in the stern.
+
+"You're going too far out," I said suddenly, for we were near the
+middle of the river.
+
+"I want to get a last look at the place," he said, "and one can see
+better from out here.  Doesn't the town look lovely in the dusk?--see
+all those twinkling lights."
+
+"Yes," I agreed, "it's beautiful.  Why do you say that?" I asked,
+trying to conceal the tremor in my voice.
+
+"Say what?"
+
+"What you said a moment ago--about a last look--why the last?"
+
+"Because it is," he answered slowly, the oars hardly moving now.  "I'm
+going away."
+
+I looked down at the dimpling track my hand was making in the water.
+
+"When?" I said; oh, so carelessly.
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"Where?" as I caught at the little throb in my voice.
+
+"To Canada--they've got an opening for me there.  I'm going to take a
+mission field."
+
+I made no response.  But I knew for the first time, in all this life of
+mine, what it really meant to have a heart on fire.  He was not
+looking, so he could not see the quick rise and fall of my bosom as I
+looked out through the deepening darkness towards the twinkling shore.
+I could see the dim outline of a few tall elms on the bank; and muffled
+sounds floated towards us across the darkling water.  But what I
+remember most was the wonderful stillness that reigned without, while
+the first real heart-storm I had ever known raged deep within.
+
+One hand was in the water, troubling the unconscious element; in the
+other I still held the letter I had written Charlie.  And I leaned far
+out over the edge of the boat, withdrawing my gaze from the shore; but
+the silent river gave back nothing except murky blankness.  Life had
+the selfsame colour to me then, poor child and changeling that I was.
+Suddenly I felt that his eyes were on me, though the gloom was
+deepening--and I trembled, actually trembled; if I had been alone with
+him in mid-ocean I could not have trembled more.  Perhaps I glanced
+down the sullen river and remembered that its home was the far waiting
+sea.
+
+Then he moved--and towards me.  If there had been a mile between us,
+instead of a few paltry feet, I could not have been more conscious of
+his coming.  For he never spoke, and I neither spoke nor stirred.  In a
+moment he was beside me, or at my feet, or both.  And such a
+transformation I had never seen.  His voice was low and unsteady,
+choking almost, and I could catch the wonderful fire of his eyes as
+they were fastened on me in the gloom.
+
+"Don't," I said faintly, "please don't--let us row in--we'll miss the
+mail."
+
+But he made no movement, never even glancing at one of the oars which
+had been lifted from its socket and slipped with a little splash into
+the stream.  The other sulked alone in the darkly dimpling water.
+
+"Oh!  Helen," he said in an altered voice, such a voice as I had never
+heard before, "you know--you know all I want to say."
+
+He had hold of my hand, the one that held the letter.  And still I did
+not move or speak.  But a swift thought flashed through my mind; it was
+of another day, when another man had thus laid siege to me--and I knew
+now what life's real passion meant.  Yes, I will tell it--and they may
+smile who will--my whole soul leaped in silent ecstasy, and triumph,
+and hope.  But the greatest of these was hope.  I knew, at long last,
+what it meant to love and to be loved--and no queen ever gloried in the
+hour of her coronation as I silently rejoiced in mine.  I forgot that
+he was stronger than I, and greater, and nobler; forgot all about the
+strength of intellect that I had felt as a gulf between us; all the
+difference, too, of life's aim and purpose was sunk and forgotten now.
+I even forgot that he was a minister at all, set apart for life to
+duties and sacrifices for which I had neither gift nor inclination.  I
+only knew I loved him, and that we were alone together--and that he was
+at my feet.
+
+"Helen," he began again, "I'm going away--and you'll forget all about
+me, won't you, Helen?"
+
+It was sweet to hear him speak my name.  And his words would mean, of
+course, that he wanted me to forget--but I knew what they really meant,
+and I held every tone sacred to my heart.
+
+Then I said, and the words were soft as the breeze about us: "I won't."
+
+I knew it was wrong--for Charlie's letter was still in the hand he
+held.  But it was glorious.  Oh, how I revelled in the words I spoke!
+They were simple and insignificant, I know,--but the wild breath of a
+new-born love pulsed through them, and I could see by the kindled face,
+though the dark was round about us, how his heart had leaped to
+recognize their meaning.  And then his own soul poured itself out in a
+great gust of passion, pure and holy and resistless and triumphant; all
+the strength and silentness and self-control that had provoked my
+wonder through the days seemed now to be turned to leaping flame as he
+told me--oh, so eloquently and yet so brokenly--of such a love as I had
+never dreamed could be offered any maiden's heart.
+
+"Can you see that steeple there?" he said, his voice hoarse with
+feeling as he pointed to the distant town; "no, it's too dark--but I
+can see it.  I see it even in my dreams.  It was under its shadow I met
+you first, when your uncle and I were coming from the train.  And I
+knew then, Helen--in that instant I knew, and have known ever since,
+that there was only one love for me--and it was you, my darling.  And I
+knew, I knew, who put the roses in that attic room of mine--and they
+made the place like heaven to me ever since.  And give me this,
+Helen--surrender it to me," he went on passionately, his fingers
+closing stealthily around the letter in my hand.
+
+"I cannot," I cried, protesting, summoning what strength I might.  "Oh,
+I cannot--that's my letter to Charlie."
+
+His clasp relaxed a little.  "I know," he said; "that's why I want
+it--and you cannot, you must not, send it now."
+
+"But you told me, you told me more than once," I pleaded; "you said how
+true I ought to be--you know you did," and I trembled lest his own
+counsel should prevail.
+
+He seemed to sink back a little--and awful silence reigned a moment.
+"But I didn't know," he soon began, new earnestness in his voice, "I
+only knew then that I loved you--and I could have given you up, I
+really could--but I didn't know then that you belonged to me--to me, my
+darling," his voice rising to the masterful with the words; "I didn't
+know then that God meant you for me, and that that was why He led my
+steps across the sea.  I could have given you up--I swear I could," he
+cried almost fiercely, "if it had meant nothing but a wounded life for
+me--but when it's you--oh, when it's you, my darling, when your life
+would be wounded and broken too.  For you love me, my own," and his
+voice had the tenderest strain that ever filled woman's heart with
+rapture; "don't you, Helen?" he went pleadingly on; "oh, say you do--or
+tell me, tell me, Helen, if you don't."
+
+Then the silence of death reigned about us both, though heaven knows I
+tried my best to break it, but could make no sound.  And then,
+then--with all the stealth of love and of a strong man's will--he
+gently drew the letter from my hand, my heart fluttering till it hurt,
+and without a word he tore it up, slowly, noiselessly, almost
+reverently, into a hundred pieces, and a moment later they fluttered
+through the dark out onto the bosom of the silent river.
+
+I was like one in a dream, unspeaking still.  Perhaps I had a great
+sense of weakness, even of wrong.  But I do not think so.  I only knew
+that life was changed to me in that wonderful hour, and that I cared
+nothing for the future, all that it might bring, all my unfitness for
+it.  I only knew that I had found at last what my poor, tired,
+frivolous heart had been seeking in alien ways for long.  And I knew
+that love's great lie, so desperately cherished, had retreated before
+Love's great Reality.  And when he took me in his arms, so strong, so
+tight, I shut my eyes and rested there; and when he kissed me--only
+once--I prayed, a swift, wonderful prayer.  And I knew at last that
+love was holy, stainless, and that God was good.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_A MOTHER CONFESSOR_
+
+They were waiting for us when we got home, wondering a little why we
+were so late.  We told them we had been on the river, and Mr. Laird
+apologized for the loss of the oar; I remember uncle said it was lucky
+he was able to paddle his own canoe.
+
+I went into mother's room when I went up-stairs to fix my hair--and she
+noticed that Charlie's ring was absent from my hand.  I expected her
+to, for it was a source of constant joy to her.  Then I told her.  I
+shall not describe the gust that followed, except to say that what I
+remember best about it was mother's appeal to my sense of unfitness for
+the life of a minister's wife.  There was a lot more--Europe and the
+yacht were not forgotten--about the folly of giving myself to a life of
+obscurity and poverty when a very different one was open to me.
+
+"I'm sick of money," I said foolishly; "I've always had nearly
+everything I wanted--and I wasn't happy."
+
+"You'll know the difference when you don't have your uncle to give you
+everything you want," said my mother.
+
+"He's been the kindest man that ever was," I agreed, "but no uncle that
+ever lived could give a girl everything she wants.  There's only one
+can do that," I went on, for my heart was singing--"and I've found him
+at last."
+
+It was then that mother appealed to me on the ground of my unfitness
+for the life I had chosen.  And I must admit that _did_ hit me pretty
+hard.
+
+"Look at our minister's wife," she said; "she's meant for it.  It's
+true she looks half starved, and she's always dowdy, and has to make a
+dress do for years--but she's happy in that kind of life."
+
+"Maybe I'll be happy too," I ventured to predict.
+
+"How could you be?" retorted my mother.  "How could you ever hope to
+be, when you're not fitted for that kind of work?  Mrs. Furvell can
+lead in prayer."
+
+"Well, I can't," I said--"but I can follow.  And Mr. Laird says that's
+better."
+
+"And she can take the chair at meetings--and she knows how to talk to
+ministers when they come--and they say she looks over her husband's
+sermons, and makes suggestions."
+
+"My husband's sermons won't need any," I made reply.  And at this I
+blushed furiously: the word sounded like a beautiful judgment day.  I
+knew how crimson my face and neck all grew, for I was standing in front
+of a pier glass at the time, my hair flowing down about my shoulders.
+And I wondered if I was beautiful--I hoped I was, but not for my own
+sake at all--I can honestly say no vanity was in my thought.
+Everything was different now.
+
+"Of course," conceded my mother, "I believe in a girl marrying for
+love--but you haven't known him long enough.  Now Charlie's different;
+you've known him so long."
+
+"That's just where it comes in," said I, dimly groping for what I felt
+was a great point.
+
+"What do you mean?" said mother.
+
+"I don't know," I answered, which was gloriously true.
+
+"Besides," digressed my mother, leaving this obscure point unsettled,
+"what reason have you got to think you'll ever get along agreeably with
+his folks?"
+
+"I'd get along with Choctaw Indians," quoth I, "if it would make him
+any happier; besides, I won't have to--they're all in Scotland."
+
+"Whose happiness do you mean?" enquired my mother, though she knew
+right well.
+
+"Why, his--Mr. Laird's, of course."
+
+"Are you going to call him Mr. Laird?" pursued my mother, for womanly
+curiosity will show itself even amid high tragedy.
+
+"I reckon so--I don't know," and I laughed as I spoke; "that never
+occurred to me."
+
+"He didn't ask you to--to call him Gordon?"
+
+"Mercy, no--why should he?" I exclaimed aghast.
+
+"Why shouldn't he?" replied my mother.  "I remember the night your
+father asked me to marry him--but then, there's no use of that; that's
+all over now.  When is he going to speak to me about it, Helen?"
+
+"Oh, mother," I said, putting my arms about her neck, "you're such a
+woman!  I know you're just counting the minutes till you'll be alone
+with him when he's pleading with you to give your daughter to him.
+That's the next best thing to getting a proposal yourself, isn't it,
+mother?"
+
+But she was not yet ready for surrender.  "It's very easy for you,
+Helen," she said seriously, "to treat it all as a trifling matter--but
+you don't know what a heavy heart you've given me.  And there's another
+thing," she went on, a little timidly, I thought: "I suppose you don't
+forget that his father's a shepherd--a man that takes care of sheep, on
+the hills?" she enlarged.
+
+"No, I haven't forgotten it," I answered, and I felt my colour rising,
+"nor has he forgotten.  And I wouldn't care if his father were a
+chimney-sweep.  Do you mean that, mother?" I demanded, my voice about
+as stern as she had ever heard it.
+
+"Mean what, Helen?"
+
+"Do you mean that that--about his father being a shepherd--should make
+any difference to me?  When I love him?" I added, my voice shaking a
+little.
+
+"No, child, no.  No, of course not," my mother hastened to reply; "only
+it'll be a little awkward, I'm afraid.  You've got to consider
+everything, you know."
+
+"That's just what I'm doing," I retorted quickly.  "And if he's good,
+and true, and noble--and he is--what difference does it make to me who
+his father is, or what he does?  It won't be as awkward as to be
+married to a man you don't love--that's what I _would_ call awkward," I
+cried, "and that's what nearly happened me.  And he--Mr. Laird--he tore
+the letter up and threw it into the river, thank God!" as the tears
+that could no longer be restrained poured forth at last.
+
+Her tender arms tightened about me as she soothed me with some
+explanation of what she meant, telling me meantime that I was tired and
+needing rest.  Nor did the interview last much longer, being fruitful
+of but little satisfaction on either side.  Mother loved me too well to
+make any real unpleasantness about it; and, before we finished, she
+laid most of her grief to the score of Charlie's broken heart.  But she
+did add, rather sorrowfully, that in all probability now I would live
+and die without ever seeing Europe.
+
+I believe there's no place where a girl so feels the trembling joy of
+love as in her own little room when first she returns to it with her
+lips still moist from the sacramental kiss.  I have often wondered
+since why this is so.  And I do not know.  But I remember well, with
+quickening heart, that almost bridal hour.  I did not light the
+gas--and I wondered at the time why I shrank from doing so--but kindled
+instead the candle on my dressing-table.  The soft and tender light
+accorded better with my mood, and the flitting shadows that fell across
+the room seemed beautiful.  When I was undressed and robed for the
+night, I sat long, my hair still flowing on my shoulders, before the
+pier glass, gazing into my own eyes for very joy.  The shallow will say
+it was empty vanity; but it was not.  It was a kind of communion time,
+searching, so far as I could, the mystic depths of a personality that
+had been so suddenly wakened to a new and holy life.
+
+I know not how long I lingered thus, peering into the hidden
+future--once or twice I buried my hot face in my hands--marvelling at
+the ministry of love, before I put the candle out and went to bed.  And
+then, strangely enough, there stole into my mind the verse Charlie used
+to love to hear me sing.  I hummed it softly to myself:--
+
+  "Still must you call me tender names
+    Still gently stroke my tresses;
+  Still shall my happy answering heart
+    Keep time to your caresses."
+
+But now the words seemed all on fire and I wondered why their beauty
+had never appeared to me before.  I lilted them again and again, the
+image of my lover, my first real lover, before me all the time--and I
+wondered when, if ever, I would sing the words for him.
+
+But all of a sudden I felt that this was frivolous.  For it was
+beginning to be borne in upon me--scarcely thought of in the first rush
+of joy--what manner of man this was whose lot I was to share.  I was to
+be a minister's wife!  With a wave of cowardice I hid my face under the
+snowy covers as I thought of it; while visions of other days, of dances
+and parties and cards, and all sorts of alien things, floated before my
+eyes.  I fought against them all with an intensity they did not
+deserve, really trying to lead my thoughts into higher channels.  And
+there came into my mind--which I have always considered an intervention
+from a Higher Source--a line or two of a psalm I had heard Mr. Laird
+sing more than once.  The words came back to me so readily, and I said
+them over and over again to myself:--
+
+  "I to the hills will lift mine eyes
+  From whence doth come mine aid,"
+
+and, almost before I knew it, I had slipped out of bed and was on my
+knees in prayer.  I must confess that I barely knew how to pray--that
+is, outside of a little groove along which my devotions had tripped
+since I was a child.  But this time I really did pray--out of my own
+heart--though I fear it was a very broken and halting prayer, a poor
+sort of thing compared to those finished efforts of Mrs. Furvell to
+which my mother had referred.  Yet I think it was sincere.  I asked God
+to guard my love--but especially his--and to not let anything happen to
+spoil it; and to help me give up everything that was wrong or
+frivolous, and to make me some help to him in his life-work.
+
+I was hardly snuggled up in bed again before I heard Mr. Laird coming
+up-stairs to the attic.  I suppose he had been doing some thinking on
+his own account, all alone in the parlour.  His room was right over
+mine--and that was why I had such a luxurious night.  For very soon he
+began walking up and down the floor--I don't think he knew I was just
+beneath--and he kept up that lonely tramp for hours.  Every step he
+took was music to me.  Back and forward, forward and back, he walked,
+and I could fairly see the tall, noble form, the serious face, the
+deep, penetrating eyes.  Once or twice he stopped, for a few minutes;
+and I began to fear he didn't love me as he should.  But soon the firm
+tread began again and then I knew how really dear I was.
+
+Dozens of times since then, when I have teased him about it, he has
+told me those little silences came when he threw himself on his bed and
+snatched a few minutes' sleep; but that he knew I was listening, so he
+would shake himself, dash some cold water on his face or wrap a towel
+about his head, and start on his beat again.  But I knew better--and
+anyhow, he confessed to me once that nothing short of chloroform could
+have kept him still that night.
+
+When we assembled at breakfast the next morning Mr. Laird didn't eat
+anything except one little half slice of toast--and I could see how
+this appealed to mother, though she maintained a sad gravity throughout.
+
+When the meal was finished he asked mother if he might have a few
+minutes with her alone.  And she asked him what could it possibly be
+about!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_THE WAIL OF THE LOWLY_
+
+It was "Gordon" now, always "Gordon"--though of course nobody called
+him that but me.  For he had made yet another little addition to his
+visit--and he and I had improved the time.  But his departure was near
+at hand.
+
+And it does seem sad that what occurred had to happen just before he
+left.  For everything had gone so beautifully.  Mother, it is true,
+used to sigh sometimes, and once or twice expressed the hope that
+Charlie hadn't killed himself when he got the tidings and the ring.  I
+had no such fears; for the brief note that came back informed me that
+he would say nothing till he came and saw me; which, he said, he would
+do as soon as some very urgent business would permit.  But mother
+declared she knew this was only said to conceal the fact that he was
+prostrate in his bed.
+
+I believe Aunt Agnes and Uncle Henry were quite composed about the
+whole affair--they thought so much of Gordon.  And even mother was
+getting fond of him; she couldn't very well have helped it, he was so
+strong and tender and dignified and true.  And I can't tell how happy
+it made me to see mother warming up to him; a few days before he
+intended to go away--and the very day of the explosion I am about to
+describe--I saw mother pull his hair.  Just a little tug, it's true, a
+little playful pinch of a few of the auburn strands--but it filled my
+soul with joy, for I think it means more for certain kinds of women to
+give the hair a little pull like that than if they took the whole man
+into their arms.  So I pretended not to see, lest my Gordon's hair
+should never be pulled again.
+
+We were all pretty resigned, as I have said--especially Gordon and
+myself.  And if Gordon had only gotten away to his Canadian field
+before that eventful night--or if every negro in the South had only
+died or been deported the day before--the whole tenor of our after
+lives might have been changed.
+
+We were seated on the porch, uncle and Gordon and I.  My mood, I fear,
+was a rather plaintive one, for I didn't know when my lover would be
+coming back.  Uncle, however, seemed in a very jovial frame of mind;
+but the worst storms always come on the most placid evenings.  He had
+just been telling Gordon that he thought I would make a pretty fair
+minister's wife after all.
+
+"You know, Mr. Laird," he remarked in mock seriousness, "there's one
+feature of Helen's record that makes me think she's right religious
+after all."
+
+"Let us have the symptoms," said Gordon, and he couldn't have looked at
+me more tenderly if he hadn't had a drop of Scotch blood in his whole
+make-up.
+
+"Well, it's this," drawled my uncle; "I've never known Helen to miss a
+Sunday-school picnic since she was able to toddle--she'd go without her
+lessons before she'd miss one.  Now don't you think that's a good
+sign?" and uncle indulged himself in the merriment his little joke
+deserved.
+
+Gordon made some laughing response, I have forgotten what.  And it was
+then that uncle began the fatal strain.  It really seemed as if it had
+to be; for, ever since that other darkey outbreak, both men had been
+careful to steer clear of the dangerous topic.
+
+"You'll have to look out," uncle began, "that those folks up North
+don't tramp on your wife's Southern corns."  Gordon gave me a funny
+look--whether it referred to the sublime word, or the grotesque one, I
+couldn't tell.  "For instance," uncle went on, "the first thing you
+know, some of them'll be expressing their opinion about slavery and
+airing their views on the whole question of the darkies.  Now I want
+you to protect her from that--don't let them bring the subject up if
+you can help it.  And, just as like as not, they'll be flaunting that
+Uncle Tom's Cabin nigger show under your noses.  There was a company
+brought it down here once--but we read the riot act to them.  It was
+'Katy, bar the door' for them.  Some of them just got off with their
+necks.  And I want you to promise me, Helen, that you'll never look at
+their infernal show; they say it's all whips, and handcuffs, and
+bloodhounds, and all the rest of the lies that Harriet Beecher Stowe
+concocted.  You'll promise me, won't you, Helen?"
+
+"Don't trouble yourself about that, uncle," I answered evasively, being
+always a cautious maiden along certain lines; "most likely Mr. Laird
+doesn't know what you're talking about.  Do you, Gordon?" I enquired,
+the change of name very sweet.
+
+"Oh, yes," he promptly replied.  "Yes, I've read the book--read it on
+the heathery hills, when I was quite a wee laddie."
+
+"Did you ever read such a parcel of lies, sir?" demanded my uncle,
+fully expecting that there could be only one answer.
+
+"I'm really not in a position to give an opinion," Gordon replied
+judiciously; "you see, I never saw slavery."
+
+"Well, I have," uncle responded vigorously, "and the book's a bunch of
+lies.  Of course, I suppose some brutes might mistreat their niggers.
+But it wasn't natural, sir--it wasn't to their interest to do so--a man
+wouldn't do it with his horse.  And the niggers were enough sight
+happier then than they are now--they were perfectly contented, sir."
+
+"That's the worst of it," said Gordon tersely.
+
+"What say, sir?  I don't know that I understand you."
+
+"That was the saddest feature of it--that they were contented,"
+repeated Gordon calmly; "that's what slavery did for them.  But it
+seems to me, Mr. Lundy," he went on, warming a little to the argument,
+"it seems to me the book in question doesn't deny that most of the
+negroes were well used."
+
+"It doesn't?" uncle began in a rather fiery tone; "it doesn't, doesn't
+it?  It's the most one-sided book that was ever written--has niggers
+dying under the lash, and hunted with hounds, and all that sort of
+thing.  What's that, if it isn't one-sided, sir?"
+
+"As far as I remember, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' impressed me as decidedly
+fair, quite impartial," Gordon ventured, his voice very calm.
+
+"It's a pack of Yankee lies, sir," interrupted my uncle warmly.
+
+Gordon flushed a little.  "That's hardly argument, Mr. Lundy," he
+replied slowly.  "You remind me of what Burke said of Samuel
+Johnson--he said Johnson's style of argument reminded him of a
+highwayman; if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the
+butt end of it."
+
+"What's that got to do with niggers?" enquired my uncle blankly.
+
+"Nothing--just with the argument," answered Gordon.  "I said I thought
+'Uncle Tom's Cabin' impressed me as impartial--and you retorted it was
+Yankee lies.  That's like calling Euclid a liar because you dissent
+from his proposition, as your great Lincoln said."
+
+"He wasn't ours--and he isn't great," retorted uncle vigorously.
+
+"Half of that may be true," Gordon answered in the most amiable tone.
+"But about the book--I'll state my position.  Mrs. Stowe portrays three
+men, if I remember right, who had to do with slaves.  Shelby, St.
+Clair, Legree, were the names, I think.  Well, one of them, Legree, is
+depicted as a brute--but the other two were like fathers to their
+slaves.  Now, if that isn't fair--two to one--I don't know what is,"
+concluded Gordon placidly, "especially as you've just admitted yourself
+that the brutal type was always to be found, even if the exception."
+
+I was growing nervous by this time, and with abundant cause.  It was
+with a sense of hearty relief I heard Aunt Agnes hurrying towards the
+porch; and before the argument could further go, she blew in upon the
+scene with tidings of an invitation she had just received for me and
+Gordon for that very evening.  I wasn't slow to make the most of the
+digression, and soon the ship of domestic peace was clear of the
+threatening rocks.
+
+Yet I could see, all through the early evening, that the debate had
+left its impress upon Gordon.  It was really wonderful how a question
+of this kind took hold of him; anything human, especially if connected
+with sorrow or injustice, seemed to kindle him as nothing else could
+do.  More than once he harked back to it within the next hour or two
+when he and I were alone.  "It's beyond my understanding," he broke
+out, "how any man--especially a Christian gentleman like your
+uncle--can defend an institution that made one man a slave of another."
+
+"But they were good to them," I defended.
+
+"Yet they were in bondage," was his terse reply; "and besides, Helen,
+you know they often had to sell them--even when they didn't want to.
+I've talked to coloured women on the streets here, who told me their
+children were sold away from them long years ago--and they've never
+seen them since.  And they cried," he added, his voice taking what was
+almost a shrill note, plaintive with sympathy.  "And I don't care if
+they did keep their slaves in luxury---if they had clothed them in
+purple and fine linen and fanned them all day long--any institution
+that makes it possible for a child to be sold from his mother,
+it's--it's damnable," he declared passionately, "and neither God nor
+man could convince me to the contrary."
+
+I was almost frightened at Gordon's vehemence--and I was powerless
+before his argument.  A kind of chill foreboding had me in its grip, I
+knew not why, that his strange intensity on this so fiery theme was yet
+to work us ill.  For, like other strangers, he had no conception of how
+deep, almost desperately deep, were the convictions of Southern men on
+the subject that seemed so thoroughly to engross him.  He harboured the
+romantic notion that all men were created equal, as the framers of our
+Constitution solemnly decreed, their slaves cringing at their feet the
+while.  He held the quixotic view, too, that it was wrong to cheat the
+darkies out of their votes--I always thought he was astray on this
+point, and I think so yet.  Gordon contended, also, that they had the
+same kind of feelings as white folks--but I suppose that will be a
+debated point while time shall last.  Gordon did not know, however, how
+necessary it was that the darkies should be kept in their proper place;
+nor did he know the long purgatory our Southland had gone through in
+the days of reconstruction, and carpetbaggers, and negro rule, and all
+that sort of thing.  He had no idea of the fiery zeal with which white
+men had to guard their supremacy, enforcing the social distinction,
+keeping the negro where he belonged, piously preserving the curse of
+Ham upon him.  In a word, Gordon hadn't grasped this fundamental
+truth--which the world may just as well accept first as last--that, no
+matter how the negro race may predominate in numbers, or grow in
+wealth, or develop in intelligence, the white man never will be ruled
+by the black man.  And the only way to prevent his being on top is to
+keep him at the bottom.  So I have heard ten thousand times--and so I
+heartily believe.
+
+I think Gordon and I were discussing this very matter that night as we
+were walking home from the little gathering of which I have made
+mention already.  Coming along the street that skirts the river, my
+attention was suddenly attracted by the sound of voices from near the
+water's edge, negro voices evidently, and marked by tokens of
+excitement.  I at once stopped and called Gordon's attention to it.
+
+"They're darkies," I whispered; "what can they be doing there at this
+hour of the night?"  For it was midnight.  "And that's uncle's
+property," which was true enough, he being the possessor of a shed and
+warehouse there that stood on the river's bank.
+
+"What indeed?" Gordon echoed.  "You don't suspect anything wrong, do
+you?"
+
+I made some incoherent reply, muttering something about fire, I think.
+For that is a constant form of dread to the Southern mind.
+
+"I'll go over and see," said Gordon.  "You come part of the way--wait
+there, I won't let you out of my sight," as he moved on towards the
+shadowy figures that could be seen moving in the darkness.  A low
+mysterious wail broke from them at frequent intervals.
+
+"What are you doing here?" I heard Gordon's stern Scotch voice ring out
+a moment after he had left me.  A sharp cry of fear broke from the two
+crouching forms as they turned their dusky faces up to his through the
+night.  They were two negro women and their rolling eyes shone white in
+the darkness.  They stood before him trembling.
+
+"Come, speak; what are you doing here?" Gordon's voice came sterner
+than before.
+
+"Please, sah, we's lookin' fo' our chil'uns," one liquid voice wailed
+forth.
+
+I was Southern born and Southern bred--and I had been taught, as
+carefully as any, the non-humanity of the black.  Yet I do not know
+that I ever felt such a gush of inward tears as rushed upon my heart
+that moment.  The scene is before me yet; the stalwart frame in
+clerical attire, towering above the cowed and obeisant figures of the
+stooping women who seemed to crave, rather than expect, some word of
+human sympathy, some hand of human help.  Poor, despised, ignorant,
+their cry yet echoed with the great note of love, the throb of primal
+passion pulsing through it; the age-old cry of the mother calling for
+her child.  And I felt a wave of pity surging over me, such as I had
+never felt before.  I rushed forward to where they stood; for the time,
+at least, we belonged to the self-same race--mine, too, was a woman's
+heart.
+
+Their story was soon told, for it was brief.  The two children, a son
+of each, had been out playing together in the early evening.  The last
+they could learn of them was to the effect that a negro man, named
+Simkins, had been seen talking to them.  Simkins was a drunken loafer.
+The unhappy women had themselves discovered that a little skiff, in
+which Simkins had a part interest, was missing from its place--and the
+tracks of boyish feet in the sand could be seen where the bow of the
+boat had been.  Doubtless Simkins had beguiled them with the prospect
+of a cruise--and what then?
+
+In a moment Gordon was questioning them with eager interest,
+interpreting their replies with difficulty; for their dialect,
+unfamiliar to him at the best, was now more unintelligible by reason of
+their grief.  While he spoke with them the women instinctively drew
+closer, as if confident of a friend.
+
+"Where do you suppose he rowed them to?" he asked quickly.
+
+The women didn't know.
+
+"Where does this man Simkins live?" he asked, after some further
+questioning.
+
+"'Way down by Pickett's Landin'--by de long wauf," one of the women
+said.  "But he done started from heah, sah."
+
+"The long wharf," repeated Gordon, turning to me, "where is that wharf?
+For that's where he'd try to land, likely enough--and if anything's
+happened, that's where it likely occurred."
+
+"I know the place," I answered, "but it's about a mile away."
+
+"We'll search this place first," he said decisively, "and if we find no
+sign we'll look there.  Have you any idea where we could get a lantern?"
+
+I thought there might possibly be one in uncle's warehouse.  A minute
+later Gordon was inside, having found an unlocked window.  Two or three
+matches flared and spluttered; then a steady light, and in a moment he
+had reappeared with the lantern.
+
+Up and down he strode, examining all the locality, the moaning women
+following at his heels.
+
+"There isn't a sign of anything here," he announced as he jumped down
+from a little landing from which he had been flashing his lantern on
+the water.  "I've got a feeling, somehow, that this man Simkins would
+try to land at the wharf nearest his home.  Come away--we'll go there."
+
+"But you'll have to take me home first," I interposed.
+
+"Is it on the way?" Gordon paused long enough to ask.
+
+"No, it's the opposite direction."
+
+"Then it can't be done," he answered, in a tone no Southern woman is
+accustomed to hear; "you'll have to come with us," and with a word or
+two more which I have forgotten, but whose tone of mastery I remember
+well, he asked the women which road to take.  If his manner had been
+less noble and self-forgetful I would have said he was lacking in the
+chivalric deference I was accustomed to receive at the hands of
+gentlemen.  But this never seemed to enter Gordon's mind, surrendered
+as it was to the business in hand.  Before I knew it he was off, and I
+had no option but to follow.
+
+A strange procession we must have made as we wound our way through the
+silent streets.  In front marched Gordon, the lantern swinging to his
+stride, pausing now and then to enquire about a turn in the way; behind
+him shuffled the crooning women, gratitude and woe mingling in their
+constant moan; last of all came I, keeping up as best I could.
+
+As we moved out on the rickety wharf, to which we came at last, I heard
+Gordon utter an exclamation of some sort and rush forward.  Then he
+stopped, holding the lantern low; its beams revealed the face of a
+negro man, lying in drunken oblivion on the wharf.  With shrill
+intonation, rudely shaking him, the women demanded of the unconscious
+Simkins the whereabouts of their children.  But Simkins' only response
+was a temporarily half-opened eye, immediately reclosed, and a groan of
+drunken content as he sank deeper into his bestial slumber.  An empty
+bottle lay beside him.
+
+Gordon turned from him with a murmur of contempt, bidding the women
+cease from their pitiful pleading with the unconscious man.  Swinging
+the lantern high, its farthest beams just disclosed a little skiff
+floating idly near the shore.  "He's upset it climbing out, as sure as
+death," I heard him mutter--"it has shot out from under him."  Then
+like a flash he made his way over the side, creeping stealthily down
+the unsteady timbers till he was at the water's edge, the lantern still
+in his hand.
+
+A cry of horror broke from his lips, echoed in unreasoning woe from the
+women above him.  He was peering down into the water.
+
+"They're there--in each others' arms," broke from him a moment later in
+a tone of ineffable sadness.  "Come down and hold the lantern, Helen."
+He reached up his hand to me without a word; and, to the accompaniment
+of sounds of anguish strangely and suddenly subdued, I clambered down
+till I stood on the broad beam beside him.  Still the strange, low
+chant went on above us, still the silent stars looked down.  Slowly,
+resolutely, still gazing into the placid depths, Gordon removed his
+coat and vest while I held the lantern as he directed.  But I kept my
+eyes upward to the stars.  A swift plunge, a half minute's silence, and
+he reappeared, one of the hapless playmates in his hand.  A second
+pilgrimage into the depths, and both were side by side upon the beam on
+which we stood.  One by one, he bore them, climbing, and laid them
+together on the wharf.  With loud outcry of anguish the women flung
+themselves upon their unresponsive dead.
+
+They lay together, those little offshoots of an unhappy race, their own
+life tragedy past and done.  Dripping they lay, the peace of death upon
+their faces, as though the relentless wave had given them kindly
+welcome.  About eight or nine years of age, poor, ragged, despised,
+they had yet been seeking some scant share of pleasure--out to
+play--when death claimed them for his own.  It was the birthday of one
+of them--so his mother said, while each wailed above her own--and that
+was why they had been permitted to play late.  Each had her simple tale
+of love, of admiration; each told, with alternating gusts of grief, of
+the goodness of her own.  Each spoke of the brothers and sisters at
+home; each wondered what life would be without the one who was gone.
+
+I stood, helpless.  But I saw, and for the first time, that God had
+called Gordon to be a pastor.  For he knelt beside them--I think
+sometimes his dripping white-clad arm rested gently on the shoulder of
+one or the other--and he tried to comfort them.  He spoke, so low and
+tenderly that sometimes I could scarcely hear his voice, of many
+things; most of which I have forgotten.  But I do remember that he said
+God didn't love them any less than they; and I recall yet how
+wonderfully he spoke of Everlasting Life.  Those very words, and he
+couldn't have said them more grandly if it had been a Cathedral
+service.  And I think he helped them a little, for they sometimes
+lifted their heads and looked at him in a dumb, grateful way.  But
+their hearts were broken.  It came over me strangely that this was the
+first time I had ever stood so close to death, and to sorrow--and these
+mourners were of the dusky race.
+
+There was little more that we could do.  Of course, Gordon roused
+somebody and sent for the proper persons.  But finally we had to leave
+them alone, the women and their dead.  Silently, as if he were
+revolving some thought in which I had no share, Gordon walked home
+beside me.  Only one thing I can remember that he said.  I think he
+stood still and looked at me through the dark as he said it:
+
+"Helen, the Bible says that God made of one blood all the nations of
+the earth, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed, wondering what was coming.
+
+"They don't believe it down here, do they?--the white folks, I mean?"
+
+"Maybe not," I answered hesitatingly; "at least, I reckon they don't
+think it's meant to be taken literally."
+
+"Perhaps not," and his eyes glowed like fire and his voice cut like
+steel; "perhaps not--but He's made of one blood all the mothers of the
+earth, by God," the words coming out aflame with passion as if his soul
+were rent with bitter protest.  Which indeed it was.
+
+"What's that?" I suddenly cried, pointing in the direction of our
+house, from which we were not far distant now.  "Oh, Gordon, quick,
+what's that?" as the dread sound fell upon my ear again.
+
+For a dread sound it was indeed.  I do not know that I had ever heard
+it before--certainly not more than once, and then when but a child--but
+it had the awful note that can be best described as the baying of
+furious and avenging men.  The Southern heart, I fancy, would recognize
+it anywhere, just as a huntsman's child would know the far-off voice of
+hounds.  I have heard many sounds since then, sounds that might well
+strike terror to the stoutest heart, but none so fraught with the
+savage omen of death and doom as the voice of strong and noble men when
+they are maddened with revengeful hate and aflame with thirst for blood.
+
+Gordon was already hurrying.  "Good heavens," I heard him murmur as we
+turned a sudden jog in the road, "what a furious scene!  They're mad,
+Helen, they're mad," he cried as we hurried closer; "what on earth
+means this?--look, they've got a halter round the wretch's neck."
+
+"Take me home," I said faintly, pointing towards the house, now but a
+few yards from us.
+
+"What does it mean, I say?" he repeated huskily, pressing on as though
+he did not hear.
+
+"It means death," I faltered; "they're going to kill him----  Oh! take
+me home," as I clutched his arm and staggered half fainting towards the
+door.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_THE LYNCHING_
+
+Needless to say the household was astir.  For our house had a fatal
+location--at least, so it proved that night--standing as it did in a
+quiet part of the town close to the long bridge that spanned the river.
+And the crowd was making for the bridge; this was to serve as a
+scaffold.
+
+Uncle was not at home.  He had gone forth about midnight, as my aunt
+told me.  A few minutes later he returned, but only for a moment, to
+explain the cause of his absence, and to tell them not to expect him
+till they saw him.  His eyes were bloodshot, my mother said, and his
+lips were dry.  Yet uncle was the most peaceable of men--but this one
+thing seems to make savages out of the mildest of Southern gentlemen.
+It was the old story; this wretched negro had assaulted a woman on the
+street, a poor ignorant white girl who had been sitting up with a sick
+friend, and who thought she could slip unattended across the couple of
+blocks that separated her from her home.  He had dragged her into an
+alley--but God sent somebody.
+
+None of these infuriated men--and they comprised the flower of our
+population, many of them men of wealth and culture--had ever heard of
+the woman upon whom the black had attempted violence.  But this
+mattered not--had she been the beauty of the city, or the belle of the
+South itself, their fury could not have been greater.  She was white;
+he was black--that was enough, esteemed by them as a warrant from God
+Himself.  For no thought of the right or wrong of their deadly zeal
+ever took possession of their minds.  No knight of the middle ages was
+ever more sincere in the ardour that gave the Crusades their glory.  If
+ever men believed they were doing God service, they were these
+hot-hearted men who hurried their trembling sacrifice onward to the
+bridge.
+
+My aunt had put out the lights; whether to render the house less
+conspicuous, or to help us see the better, I do not know.  For few
+words passed as the three white faces peered out at the wild scene
+before us.  The moon had risen now, and we could see the faces of some
+of the men, though many were in masks.  A peculiar quietness seemed to
+come over the throng as they came closer to the bridge, once so tense
+that we could catch distinctly the pleading wail of the central figure,
+tugging desperately at the rope around his neck.  Poor creature, he
+knew not the ways of Southern men; or perhaps he did--and yet one
+drowning in mid-ocean would still swim towards the shore.
+
+We saw them drag the miserable culprit on to the bridge--then we turned
+away.  I suppose every Southern woman would cry out in horror at the
+thought of following them thus far--and every one would have done the
+same as we.  Yet now we turned, faint, from the window--that last dread
+scene was for other eyes than ours.
+
+But suddenly we heard a mighty shout, marvelling what it might portend.
+A kind of gleeful cry it was, as if something had been discovered, or
+some better plan devised; which proved to be the case.  For I looked
+again, and lo! they were bearing the wretch back from the bridge.  A
+swift vision of mercy quickened my heart, for I took this to be a
+reprieve.  Yet the doomed man seemed reluctant to be moved, clinging
+desperately to the railing of the bridge--for his hands were free.  The
+rope about his neck tightened as they dragged him back, and when it
+relaxed I could hear his piteous appeals, breaking now into loud wails
+of anguish.  They dragged him on.
+
+In a moment all was clear.  A large post, or pole, stood close beside
+the bridge; towards this they hauled him, new zeal seeming to animate
+the breast of every executioner.  I saw two or three of the younger men
+running towards the pole.  They had something in their arms.  It was
+wood--and a hot flush came over me from head to foot.
+
+"Oh, God," I moaned to myself, "they're going to burn him," and even as
+I spoke they were tying the struggling man tight to the post, others
+piling the wood up about him.
+
+In an instant all was ready--and I caught the gleam of a lighted match.
+I stood, transfixed with horror.  Then I felt my aunt and my mother
+tugging faintly at my dress, clutching at my arm, their faces averted
+meantime.
+
+"Come away; for God's sake, come away," they pleaded, faint and sick at
+heart.
+
+I was just obeying and had already turned from the window, when I heard
+a shout, full of savage wrath and protest--whereat I turned and looked
+once more.
+
+And my eyes fell on a scene that even yet, after all the intervening
+years, I cannot recall without a bounding heart.  For suddenly from out
+the crowd there had rushed one man, tall, powerful, clothed in black,
+his face as savage as the others, though it was savagery of a different
+sort.  He has told me since--though we have only spoken of it once or
+twice through all the years--that his own life was as nothing to him
+that night.  He saw nothing but hundreds of bloodthirsty men, and one
+guilty wretch, and the first lick of flame about his feet.  Out from
+the crowd had Gordon rushed with sudden impulse, and, when my eyes fell
+on him, the sticks and faggots were going this way and that, some by
+his feet, some by his hands outflung.  Then, before the wonder-stricken
+men who were closest to him could interfere, he had trampled on the two
+or three already lighted brands, trampled them in fury deep into the
+ground.
+
+Then he stood before them; he was close beside the black, whose
+quivering face was upturned to his in an agony of pleading.  There he
+stood, a mighty figure of a man; at least, so he appeared to me as I
+gazed, petrified, at the awesome scene.  And his pose was the very
+incarnation of defiance as he towered above them, his face aflame with
+indignation and courage and contempt.
+
+Then I saw a movement in the crowd--or felt it rather--that chilled my
+heart with terror.  I knew what would happen now, knew it, with
+unerring instinct--and I trembled as a fawn quivers when it hears the
+first low cry of distant dogs.  And swiftly, silently, scorning both
+aunt and mother, I flew through the door on to the porch, down the
+steps, gliding like a shadow till I found shelter behind an ancient elm
+on the outskirts of the swaying crowd.  I was as safe there, and as
+unobserved, as though I had been a hundred miles away.
+
+It only took a minute, but Gordon had begun to speak before I got
+there, his quivering voice ringing like a bell through the night.  The
+men before me were just beginning to recover from the first shock of
+surprise.
+
+"Who is that ---- fool?" I heard one enquire, not more than four feet
+ahead of me.
+
+"I know him," a voice answered.  I recognized the informant at once--he
+had been to our house for supper only a few nights before.  "He's a
+parson that's visiting the Lundys.  A ---- Scotchman," he went on
+contemptuously; "his father's a collie dog over there--takes care of
+sheep on the hills, he told me."
+
+I knew how helpless I was, but my blood was boiling.  I shook my fist
+at the horrid creature from where I stood--I could have lynched _him_,
+right then and there.
+
+"If you must kill him before he's proved guilty," came Gordon's voice,
+"kill him like white men, not like Indians."
+
+A mighty roar went up at this, and the crowd swayed nearer to the
+central figures.  A loud howl of terror came from the negro.  But the
+immediate peril was not for him--the storm was raging now about another
+head than his.  I think a moment later would have seen Gordon in the
+clutches of the mob, had it not been temporarily restrained by one of
+the oldest and most honoured of our citizens.  I saw him lift his hand
+as a signal for silence; in a moment he and Gordon seemed to be
+carrying on an animated argument.  I couldn't hear Colonel Mitford, for
+such was his name; but I could catch Gordon's voice.
+
+"I've heard plenty about your Southern chivalry--would you lynch a
+white man if he offered the same indignity to a black woman as this
+wretch has done?"
+
+The Colonel seemed to pause for a season.  And really, it's not much
+wonder that he should--I am as Southern as any one who ever lived, but
+that question makes me pause even yet.  Soon the Colonel broke out
+again, this time into quite a prolonged speech.
+
+"It's all your rightful heritage," came back Gordon's voice, ringing
+high; "it's the legacy slavery has left you.  You're only reaping what
+you sowed."
+
+At this the clamour was renewed, the crowd pressing in again--and I
+half started from my hiding-place.  But again the Colonel persuaded
+them to silence, and again he directed his remarks to Gordon He was
+evidently saying something about the relation of the races.
+
+Then came Gordon's thunderbolt: "It seems to me," he cried hotly,
+recklessly, "it seems to me you couldn't have much more fusion than you
+have already--this negro's half white himself;" which proved more, as I
+knew it would, than any Southern man would stand.
+
+"Then you can take what you deserve, curse you for a nigger-lover," I
+heard the Colonel retort madly, his voice lost in the roar of hate, the
+wild outcry for vengeance that burst from the infuriated crowd.  All
+resistance was now swept away, and a few ringleaders at the front
+fairly clutched at Gordon.  One had him by the throat, the others
+pressing in upon him with wolfish fury gleaming in their eyes.
+
+But before their purpose--what it was I know not, nor probably did
+they--before it could be carried out, another rushed to the grim
+theatre.  It was my Uncle Henry, his hat gone, lost somewhere in the
+crowd.  He leaped to where Gordon stood, and at his presence the men
+fell back.
+
+"You shan't injure this man," he shouted hoarsely.  "Not that I contend
+he doesn't deserve it--but he's my guest," the word echoing clear.
+"He's my guest," uncle repeated, for he knew the magic of the word;
+"he's a stranger amongst us--and an ignorant stranger at that.  I'll
+take the fool home," he went on, casting at Gordon one of the most
+contemptuous glances I ever saw from human eyes, "and I'll deal with
+him myself.  I'll promise you to deal with him--he's my guest.  And you
+shall do as you please with the nigger."
+
+I think the storm abated for a moment.  Perhaps it would have subsided
+altogether, for stranger is a sacred name to Southern ears.  But
+suddenly Colonel Mitford, still ashy pale with wrath, shouted to the
+crowd:
+
+"He said they couldn't have more white blood in them than they've
+got--he said we're blended now," the words ending in a half snarl, half
+cry; for if there is anything under God's sky that makes Southern men
+drunk with fury it is just such a statement as Gordon had been rash
+enough to make.
+
+Some one else shouted a confirmation of the Colonel's words, another
+added something Gordon had never said; and slowly, relentlessly, the
+crowd surged in again upon him.  My uncle was rudely flung aside--I
+could hear his voice in protest through the storm.  Then, exactly what
+I feared, some of the assassins, more maddened than the rest, jerked
+the rope from the negro's neck and flung it with a loud cry over
+Gordon's head.  This was to the crowd what the taste of blood is to the
+tiger, and a fiendish yell broke from a hundred throats.  It is not
+likely they really meant to kill him--but no one could forecast the
+limit of their violence.
+
+I wouldn't have cared if there had been a million men and every man a
+Nero.  I didn't will to do it, I didn't know I was doing it, didn't
+calculate what it meant at all.  But I just felt I was stronger than
+them all, and that it was now or never.  So, without word or cry, I
+sprang from behind that ancient elm and leaped to where Gordon stood.
+I could never remember that I pushed or elbowed through the crowd; I
+don't believe I did.  There seemed to be an open path for me, and in
+far less time than it takes to tell I was at his side.  I remember how
+close I was--so close that I caught the gleam of that awful negro's
+eyes and felt his breath upon my cheek as he panted in prospect of his
+doom.  And in a flash I had torn that rope from Gordon's neck, flung it
+on the ground, stamped on it, as I turned and hurled defiance at the
+crowd in one long look that I felt myself was all of fire.  Then I took
+Gordon's hand in mine, pointing silently towards the house.  He
+followed me, and uncle walked behind.
+
+I don't think the slightest resistance was offered us.  The only
+protest was from Gordon himself.  He would have lingered, had he had
+his way.  But some word of mine--I know not what--settled that mad
+purpose in his mind; and he walked beside me, towering still, his head
+more erect, his bearing more kingly, than that of any of the throng who
+turned scornful eyes upon him as we went.
+
+We were almost through the crowd when something happened that almost
+brought the mist of unconsciousness before my eyes, my head reeling, my
+heart spinning like a top.  A voice, instantly familiar, spoke Gordon's
+name, hurling an epithet of contempt and hate so malignant that he
+turned a moment, as if he would seek and punish his assailant.  Then he
+smiled disdainfully, took my arm tighter in his own, and walked calmly
+on.
+
+I too turned--and the face I saw was the face of Charlie Giddens.  His
+gaze met mine, and he sought to smile; but I could see his enmity to
+Gordon gleaming through it all, and I hope my eyes bore themselves as
+my heart would wish.
+
+When we gained our home aunt and mother received us with weeping joy.
+But uncle uttered never a word.  Instead, he went silently about the
+house, drawing tight the shutters on every window that looked upon the
+scene we had just deserted.  For he knew what was transpiring now.  As
+he came down the stairs, I met him in the hall and flung my arms about
+his neck.  Not a word of chiding escaped his lips--he stroked my hair,
+and his tenderness was the tenderness of farewell.
+
+I told him, with trembling voice, that I had seen Mr. Giddens in the
+throng.  This did not surprise him.  "I know it," he said; "he came in
+on the eleven o'clock train--he heard the noise, of course, and came
+up.  Listen," he suddenly cried, as we heard a footfall on the porch,
+succeeded by a gentle knock at the door, "what's that?  That'll be
+him--go inside, child," as he walked to the door to open it.
+
+Gordon was sitting in the corner of the room, offering speech to
+nobody, when Mr. Giddens came in.  The latter bowed with courtly grace
+to my mother and my aunt, casting on me a glance that showed he still
+hoped--perhaps more now than ever.  Then he walked straight over till
+he stood in front of Gordon.
+
+"Laird," he said, before any one could speak, "you've tried to ruin my
+happiness--and I've got to settle with you yet for that."  Gordon
+sprang to his feet.  "And you've outraged the sentiment of this
+city--and you've disgraced this home," the words coming out like
+pistol-shots, "and I want to know what you've got to say for yourself."
+
+"Nothing--to you," said Gordon, his face looking a little terrible, his
+voice overflowing with contempt.
+
+Mr. Giddens turned livid--and he made a motion backward with his hand,
+a motion familiar to all Southern men; it was towards his pocket.  "If
+it weren't my respect for the house we're in," he hissed through his
+teeth, "I'd shoot you like a dog."
+
+Gordon's face was now altogether terrible.  He stepped closer to the
+Southerner, his eyes fastened on him like balls of flame.  "I've heard
+other cowards talk like that," he said.
+
+Then Mr. Giddens' hand flew forward, unarmed; and he struck Gordon full
+in the face.  We were too late--we might as well have raced with
+lightning.  Before we could speak or move, Gordon's mighty grip was on
+his throat, and he wrenched him back, back, till his head struck with a
+thud against the corner wall.  There is something marvellous about
+these Scotchmen when madness seizes them.  So reserved, so silent, so
+inscrutable, there is no race on earth so calm and none so deadly.  And
+strength--such fearful strength!  Still gripping him with grasp of
+iron, Gordon drew back his hand, every muscle in neck and wrist
+standing out like whip-cords as he gathered force for the blow.
+
+Then suddenly his hand fell to his side; he seemed to shake himself
+free from his passion, as a man wakens himself from sleep; the mighty
+struggle showed in the quivering voice.
+
+"I could kill you," he said with fearful quietness; "I could kill you
+now--go," as he released his antagonist, already purple.
+
+Holding his hand to his throat, the hot blood cooled by now, Mr.
+Giddens staggered over towards my uncle.  "Mr. Lundy," he began
+thickly, "we expect you to deal with this cur--as you said you would.
+He's brought disgrace on you--and he's insulted every lady in the South
+by what he did to-night--and we look to you to treat him as he
+deserves."
+
+There was a queer smile about my uncle's mouth.  For nearly a minute he
+did not speak, did not even look towards the man who had addressed him.
+Then he turned slowly round.
+
+"Mr. Giddens," he began, in a voice that sounded strange from him,
+"I'll deal with him.  Yes, sir, I reckon I'll deal with him."
+
+"I knew you would, Mr. Lundy," the other returned eagerly; "I knew no
+Southern gentleman----"
+
+"But I'll deal with you _first_, sir," my uncle interrupted stormily;
+"you knew--you knew, did you?  Perhaps you didn't know that no
+gentleman allows another man to insult his guest.  And that's what
+you've done, sir--that's what you've done--you struck a visitor in my
+house, struck him in the face, sir.  There's the door, sir--the
+street's the place for you,--go," his voice rolling like thunder now.
+
+Mr. Giddens ventured an amiable smile, stepping a little nearer to my
+uncle.  I think he partly held out his hand.  "Mr. Lundy," he began in
+a conciliatory tone, "I meant no disrespect to you.  This really isn't
+necessary, Mr. Lundy.  You and I were friends before we knew this--this
+Scotchman--was on the earth.  And it seems a pity----"
+
+"Go," thundered my uncle, pointing to the door.  Then suddenly his
+voice grew white with ungovernable wrath, and he whipped a shining
+pistol from his pocket.  "Go, by heavens," he cried huskily; "I had
+this ready for the nigger--but you'll get it if you speak another word.
+Go out that door--or you'll be carried out, by God," as he advanced
+nearer to the already retreating man.
+
+
+When we were alone and all was still again, uncle silently motioned me
+to follow him.  Gordon had already departed in silence to his room.
+Uncle took me into his own apartment and shut the door behind him.
+
+"Helen," he began gravely, "I shall speak no word to--to your friend.
+Not a word.  You must tell him."
+
+"Tell him what?" I asked, who had no need to ask.
+
+"I reckon you know," my uncle answered quietly.  "He can stay here no
+longer, of course."
+
+"No," I assented, my voice choking.
+
+"But he needn't leave to-night--tell him he can stay the night.  But
+to-morrow," he concluded significantly.  I nodded.
+
+"Will you go to him--some day, I mean?" he asked after a long pause.
+
+"Yes," I faltered, with downcast head; "yes, some day."
+
+"And leave me, Helen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your mother--and Aunt Agnes?"
+
+"Yes," I murmured low, the hot tears dropping from my eyes.
+
+"I suppose you know he can never come back here any more?" he began
+after a little, the words coming slowly and sadly.
+
+"Yes," I answered; "yes, never any more."
+
+"You're foolish, Helen," and his own voice was choking as he came over
+and put his arm around me.  "When you remember he's a stranger; and
+then, your mother and I and----"
+
+"Is that all?" I interrupted, sobbing.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, "yes, that's all."
+
+"Then I'll tell him," I said brokenly; "I'll tell him now."
+
+I stole up-stairs to the attic and knocked at Gordon's door.  He opened
+it; then asked me if I would come in.  I looked around; he had begun
+his simple packing.  But he did not speak.  Then I held out my
+arms--and I heard him murmur "Thank God" while he held me tight, so
+tight, as though he would never let me go.
+
+I faltered out that uncle didn't want him to go until the morning.
+
+"It's morning now," he said firmly, "and I'm just ready to go," from
+which resolve I was powerless to dissuade him.  "I'll stay at the hotel
+till to-morrow evening," he added.
+
+"But there's a morning train," I interrupted, looking up at him.
+
+"I know--but I'm not going till the evening," he said quietly.  I knew
+what he meant.
+
+Suddenly he disengaged my arms and held me out in front of him.  "Helen
+Randall," he said solemnly, "will you come to me?"
+
+I buried my face again where it had been before; my tightening arms
+gave him answer.  Then he kissed me, kissed me--only twice, I
+think--but he kissed me as maiden never was kissed before.  And he bade
+me go; which I did after I had clung to him once more.  And I remember
+how his poor face was bruised, where he had been struck the cruel blow.
+
+I went to my room.  Soon I heard him going down the stairs.  I knew,
+from the sound of his steps, that he was carrying his valise.  He saw
+Aunt Agnes in the hall, I believe, the only one who was there--and to
+her he said his last farewell.  I heard the door close gently; I could
+catch the dying footfalls echoing through the night.
+
+I opened my door before I went to bed.  Something was resting against
+it.  Picking it up eagerly, I scanned it beneath the light.  It was the
+old Scotch psalm-book from which Gordon had sometimes sung.  And the
+page was turned over to mark one of the psalms--the forty-sixth--which
+he had indicated with heavy strokes.  My eyes swam as I read the great
+lines over and over again.  They seemed just meant for us:
+
+  "God is our refuge and our strength,
+    In straits a present aid;
+  Therefore although the earth remove,
+    We will not be afraid."
+
+
+It refreshed me like a breath of mountain air to read the words; I was
+still murmuring them when I crept into bed.  I resolved to try and
+learn the tune that was set to the noble psalm--Stroudwater it was
+called--and I wondered when I would sing it to Gordon in our own little
+home.
+
+All of this, I remember, made me think that perhaps I wouldn't make
+such a bad minister's wife after all.  I really loved the psalms.  Yet
+I must confess, before this chapter finds its close, that a girl's
+heart takes a long time to change.  I fear I was very weak and
+frivolous after all; I know I thought far more of Gordon, and of his
+love, than I did of religion or of the life-work that awaited me.
+Because, just as sleep was coming down about me, I found that my
+willful heart was chanting far other lines--and they seemed sweet and
+precious:
+
+  "Still must you call me tender names,
+    Still gently stroke my tresses;
+  Still shall my happy answering heart
+    Keep time to your caresses."
+
+
+It was to their music I fell asleep, and I slept like a little child.
+But I have come to think long since that the song and the psalm were
+not such distant relatives after all.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_GIRDING ON THE ARMOUR_
+
+The year that followed Gordon's departure for the North was my growing
+year.  It was the sweetest, dreariest, love-brightest, loneliest year
+of all my life--and it was, as I have said, my progress year.  I mean,
+by that, it was the year which led me farthest in to the real secret of
+living and the real springs of life.  Of course, it was a desolate
+twelvemonth; I never saw Gordon's face from its beginning to its close;
+and this was a new side of life to me, to discover that I could miss
+any one face so much.  Nothing pleased me more than the sadness that
+used to settle down on me every now and then, especially in the
+twilight hour, when the dear absent one filled all my thought.  There
+was a kind of royal state about my widowhood--if that sombre word can
+be applied to such a hopeful year--that made me feel I was set apart
+from all other girls, especially from those who had their happiness on
+tap right at their hands.  Mine seemed to be fed from far-off
+fountains, farther up the hill; and I felt a kind of envious pity for
+those whose unromantic luxury it was to see their sweethearts every
+night.  I walked by faith; but they by sight, I thought, paraphrasing a
+text of Scripture--which, it occurred to me, was the proper thing for a
+girl with such ministerial prospects as my own.  But I suppose they
+pitied me in turn; which only goes to show what a self-rectifying world
+this is.
+
+Besides, so far as my own household was concerned, I was deliciously
+alone.  I learned, in this connection, something of the martyr's
+mysterious joy.  If there was one thing beyond another that made me
+love Gordon more and more wildly every day, it was that my family
+hardly ever spoke his name.  Excepting mother, of course; she was still
+my mother, if a disappointed and saddened one--and sometimes great
+freshets of tenderness and sympathy flowed from her heart over into
+mine.  But uncle was so stern about it all, so consistently silent.  If
+he had been a rejected lover himself he couldn't have handed me
+Gordon's daily letter more solemnly than he used to do when he came in
+with the mail.
+
+These I always read alone in secret, putting them away afterwards with
+reverent hands--and I kept the key myself this time.  And such letters
+as they were!  I could be famous over all the world, if I chose to
+publish the love-letters of Gordon Laird--they were a combination of
+poetry and fire.  Yet I had always read, and heard, that Scotchmen,
+even when in love, were as reserved and cold as their native mountains.
+Perhaps they are--but my Scotchman must have been a Vesuvius, with
+Eolian harp accompaniment, as the world would concede if they could
+once get their eyes upon his letters.
+
+I valiantly renounced everything I thought questionable for a girl
+whose promised husband was a minister of the Gospel.  I gave up cards,
+of course, though not without a pang.  Sometimes I still went to card
+parties, but I never did anything worse than punch the score cards,
+which I could do quite dexterously.  I never cared for the business
+though; if there's a mean occupation on earth, it's punching score
+cards while everybody else is having all the fun.  I fancy I felt a
+good deal like those famous pugilists that drop down at last to holding
+a sponge, or something of that sort.  I began, too, to take a faint
+interest in temperance; forswore claret punch forever; thought
+seriously, for several weeks, of giving up syllabubs; even went so far
+at table as to ask Aunt Agnes if she thought brandy sauce was quite the
+thing.  Aunt said I didn't raise the question till after I had had two
+helpings.  With regard to "the light fantastic," I never danced
+anything stronger than Sir Roger; used to play, sometimes, while the
+others waltzed--but that's deadly dry, like punching score cards, or
+holding a sponge when your fighting days are done.
+
+About the brandy sauce, mother told me after that I needn't worry.  Did
+I know how expensive brandy was, she said.  And I had already told her
+how much salary Gordon was getting in his mission field in Canada.
+There is no need to mention it here--but it was mighty little.  He had
+a country station, somewhere in the rural districts; of which, to my
+mind at least, Canada seemed to be almost entirely composed.  For all I
+knew of that Dominion was from the geography we learned at school; it
+gave only a few paragraphs to our nearest neighbour nation--and these
+were clustered round a picture that would chill you to behold, the
+picture of a man without coat or vest, knee-deep in snow, lifting up
+his axe upon the trees of the forest.
+
+Gordon's letters, of course, were full of his work and his people.  And
+they didn't contain much that would likely attract a girl brought up as
+I had been.  Little gatherings of people, mostly in country
+schoolhouses, deadly singing--which must have been hard on Gordon--rude
+companionship, humble lodgings and humbler fare, long rides and walks,
+scant results for all his toil.  But he seemed to love his work and his
+people, and never complained.  Once or twice he said they were woefully
+conservative in their theology, and that they were sternly set against
+all the views of modern scholarship, even though they didn't know what
+they were.  To tell the truth, I didn't know myself, but I felt uneasy
+at the term; far from religious though I was, I yet always felt that
+there were no doctrines worth the name except the old ones--the older
+the better, thought I.  And when I asked Mr. Furvell about it he said
+he hoped Gordon wasn't a disciple of Robertson Smith, and added
+something darkly about a "higher critic."  I didn't know exactly what
+this last might be--the adjective might apply to Gordon all right, I
+reckoned, but I didn't like the noun.
+
+Anyhow, we were going to be married; that was the principal thing to
+me, and I went bravely on making preparations for the greatest event of
+all my life.  I hadn't much to bring Gordon as a dower--practically
+nothing, indeed--for my mother's modest income left no margin for that,
+and was so bequeathed that it could not survive her.  But I wanted to
+bring him a good true heart and a sound body--with a few lovely things
+to clothe it.  Every girl wants that, or ought to, at least.
+
+Of course, it was a sad feature of the case that we were not to be
+married at our own home.  I suppose we might have been.  In fact,
+mother told me as much, and I knew she had it straight from uncle.  But
+I knew right well that it couldn't be a happy wedding there, with
+matters as they were; and, besides, it would have raked into fire the
+smouldering embers of that awful blaze that I have told about already.
+And the whole town would have been agog--not in the way, either, that
+every girl likes a town to be when she gets married.  So it was
+arranged that our wedding was to take place quietly in Baltimore, at
+the house of a girl friend of mine whose marriage had taken her there
+to live.  Gordon was to meet me there--though I really believe he would
+have preferred to beard the lions in their den--and mother was to go
+North and see me launched on this unknown sea.
+
+The first time I was ever angry with Gordon was about six weeks before
+our wedding day.  He wrote me a long letter, full of details about the
+humbleness of his position, and the slimness of his prospects--and the
+scarcity of his cash.  He wanted to go ahead, of course, he said; but
+he thought it only fair to tell me, accustomed as I had been to a life
+of comparative luxury, of the great sacrifice I was making, and to give
+me a chance even yet, should I shrink from it, to etc., etc.  I wrote
+him that very night and I told him I'd marry him if we had only the
+north side of a corn-cob to live on, which I inwardly thought was a
+pretty vigorous stroke and worthy of a nimbler pen than mine.  Gordon
+always kept that letter, he told me long after, lest the corn crop
+should ever fail.
+
+It was a lovely wedding, though there were only four people besides
+ourselves to see it.  Gordon held my hand so tight in his; and what I
+felt the most, and gloried in, was this--that he was so much stronger
+than I.  My gown looked beautiful, they all said; and I cried a
+little--two things that are necessary, it seems to me, to any really
+successful wedding.  I remember how Gordon cautioned me to be careful
+about packing my lovely dress, because, he explained, he wanted his
+people to see me at my best.  This struck me as rather odd, considering
+the class of people I was to live among--I fancied a linsey-woolsey
+would please them as well as anything else.  And I wondered when I
+would ever get a chance to wear the beautiful creation.  But I had no
+idea of the surprise that was in store for me.
+
+Mother went home by train.  My husband and I started on our way by
+boat.  It was a sweet and delicate suggestion on Gordon's part that we
+should go southward again for a day or two, to begin our married life
+under the dear familiar skies I loved so well.  Wherefore we set sail
+that evening, exactly at seven o'clock, on the Old Bay Line, our
+destination to be Old Point Comfort, which we would reach the following
+morning.
+
+It is really a pathetic thought that the bridal joy comes only once
+into a maiden's life, so quickly past and gone.  It leads, no doubt--or
+ought to lead--into a deeper peace and a more steadfast love; but it
+leads, too, away from the tranquil care-free days of youth, on in to
+the storm and stress of life's long battle.  I remember yet, with a
+thrill that never seems to die, the rapture of that hour as we steamed
+slowly out from Baltimore.  There were not many passengers--none that
+we had ever seen before.  We were alone--together.  And by and by we
+found a place on a deserted corner of the deck, our chairs close
+together, our hands sometimes passionately clasping as we looked out
+over the darkening bay and thought in silence of the waiting years
+through which we were to be parted never more.  By and by the rising
+moon clothed the bay in a robe of glory; and thus, with love and light
+about us, as happy as though no storm could ever disturb our lifelong
+way, we started on the long, long journey we were to take together.
+
+"I've got some news for you, dear," Gordon suddenly startled me by
+saying.
+
+"Do tell me quick, Gordon," said I.  Only Gordon wasn't the name I used.
+
+"Try and guess."
+
+I thought a moment.  "They've papered that old house," I said, "without
+waiting till I came," for Gordon had told me that the natives of his
+country parish had designs on the old stone manse against my arrival.
+
+"Oh, no," he said, laughing.  "No, it's good news--at least, I hope it
+may turn out to be."
+
+"Oh," I exclaimed, drawing a long breath, "I'm so glad--the paper
+they'd choose would give me the jimjams, I know.  Well, tell me."
+
+"We're not going to the old stone manse at all," he said, turning and
+looking radiantly at me in the moonlight.  "We're not going to
+Rocanville--I've got a call, Helen."
+
+"Where?" I gasped, leaning forward with my elbows on his knees, caring
+not who saw.  "And why didn't you tell me----  Oh, Gordon, did you feel
+you couldn't trust me?" my voice trembling a little as the first pang
+of conjugal sorrow smote my bosom.
+
+He laughed; then stooped and kissed me, having previously cast a swift
+Scotch glance about the deck.  "I'd trust you with my life, my
+darling," he murmured--which comforted me a good deal.  "But I wasn't
+exactly sure till two or three days ago--and I wanted to surprise
+you--and I wanted always to think that when my Helen gave herself to
+me, she thought she was going into the wilds for love's sweet sake.  So
+it will always be just as precious to me as if you had actually gone."
+
+"But where are we going?" I pressed eagerly, not lingering on the
+sweetness; "don't keep me waiting, Gordon."
+
+"To Old Point Comfort," he said with the most provoking deliberation.
+
+"Don't tease me, dearest," I protested.  Wonderful, isn't it, how
+brides always employ the tenderest names when they are just a little
+bit exasperated.
+
+And then he told me where it was we were to begin our married life.
+The church that had called us was named St. Andrew's; and it was the
+leading church, Gordon said, in Hertford, a Canadian city that shall so
+be named.  "At least," he hastened to add, "it's the richest church,
+has the richest class of people in it--whether that makes it the
+leading church or not."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad," I exclaimed breathlessly, my face aglow.  "So that's
+why you wanted me to be so careful of my wedding dress?  Isn't it all
+like a lovely fairy tale?  And are we going there right away?"
+
+"Yes--after we leave Point Comfort.  I'm to be installed there a week
+from to-day--and there's to be a reception to us in the evening."
+
+"Oh, lovely!" I cried; "I didn't think I'd get a chance to wear my
+finery at all.  Do tell me all about it, Gordon," as I snuggled closer
+in the moonlight.  The deck was gloriously deserted now.
+
+"There isn't much to tell," he said, and I wondered why he wasn't more
+jubilant about it all.  "They invited me to preach before them a few
+weeks ago.  I went--never dreamed they would call me, though.  But they
+did.  And the church isn't such a very large one--but it's very
+fashionable; too fashionable, I fear.  A minister isn't always happiest
+in a church like that, you know," and again I caught the note in his
+voice which showed he didn't regard the prospect with unmixed
+enthusiasm.
+
+"But I know we'll be happy, dear," I reassured him, quite frank in my
+exultation; "that class of people will suit you so much better.
+They'll appreciate you--you'd have been wasted on those common people
+at that other outlandish place."
+
+"Not wasted, dear," he answered quietly; "a man's never wasted where he
+does his best.  But I'm glad for your sake," he went on more brightly;
+"I don't think I'd have gone, only I thought you'd be happier there."
+
+"I'd be happy anywhere with you," I replied in bridal bliss.  "I'd have
+come to you just the same if you'd been assistant minister of an Indian
+church at the North Pole.  But I'm glad," my happy words went on, "I'm
+so glad we're going to be among congenial people.  And I'm sure we'll
+have a lovely time--we'll have a lovely social life, I mean."
+
+"I hate social life--society life, at least," Gordon suddenly broke out
+in a voice that quite startled me; "and if they think I'm going to be a
+gossipy tea-drinking parson, they'll soon find their mistake."
+
+"But, Gordon," I remonstrated seriously, "you shouldn't look at it that
+way.  Consider the influence you can have over them--that is, through
+their social life.  I think the minister of rich people has the
+greatest chance in the world--to do them good, I mean.  And I'll help
+you--I'll help you, dearest."
+
+"How?" my husband enquired after a little pause.
+
+"Well," I answered slowly; "oh, well, I like that sort of thing.  I'm
+not much good, you know, at--at--religious work, prayer-meetings and
+things," I floundered on; "but I can--I can do that part, because I
+like it.  I'll try and help you, Gordon--in that department, you know,"
+I concluded, realizing, I fear, that it wasn't a very heroic field.
+
+"I want my little wife to help me in all the departments," he answered,
+smiling.  "And you will, won't you, dearest--you'll love my work for
+its own sake, won't you?"
+
+Which I promised swiftly.  "But I think I'll love it more in that kind
+of a church," I added frankly, "than I would at Rocanville.  And of
+course I won't play cards with them, or dance--or anything like that,"
+I affirmed piously, looking to Gordon for an approving smile; "but I
+suppose it won't be any harm for me to go to those things, will it,
+dear?"
+
+"I hadn't thought of that," he said, looking out over the shining bay;
+"but I want my wife to find her life-work in mine--and to help me be a
+truer and better minister, no matter where our field of work may be."
+
+All of which I promised, with the gladdest, happiest heart.  And I told
+Gordon I wanted him to write me out a little prayer, a kind of
+missionary prayer, for opening meetings with, and all that sort of
+thing.  Gordon said I was a ritualist.
+
+Then we arose to go inside, for the night was growing chill.
+
+"Is there any danger, Gordon," I asked as we walked through the saloon,
+"any danger, do you think, that my trunks won't get to Hertford the
+same day we do?  They have the reception that night, you said."
+
+"Oh, no," he said; "the trunks have gone on ahead already."
+
+"I'm so glad," I answered; "it would be too bad to begin our work there
+with--with any handicap like that, you know."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_"OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS"_
+
+It was evident there were plenty of rich people in St. Andrew's, as
+Gordon had told me.  I hadn't been half an hour in the parlours of the
+church that evening of our reception before I was sure of that.  My
+trunks had come to hand all right, and my wedding splendour was making
+what show it could, but it soon found its level among the costly gowns
+that were worn by many a fair dame that night.  If I had wanted
+abundant evidence that Gordon was to be minister of a fashionable
+church, I had every reason to be satisfied.  I had never seen so much
+rich religion in any one organization.  Although, of course, the
+evening wasn't very much on the religious order.  There was an opening
+prayer, I think, and the good brother who offered it prayed that they
+might all go out into the highways and byways and compel them to come
+in.  I remember thinking most of them would have to change their
+clothes before they did any highway duty of that kind--and I felt sorry
+for the wanderers that might be introduced.
+
+The people were very kind and cordial in their welcome.  But I could
+see they expected me to realize what a superior sort of people they
+were, and what a fortunate sort of individual I was.  They nearly all
+shook hands in the high pump-handle fashion that was almost unknown in
+the South; and they managed, in divers little ways, to let me know they
+were a very elaborate aggregation of Christian folks.  I rather thought
+one or two of the best groomed of them looked at me as if I had no
+right to be so decently clothed myself.
+
+The evening was far spent when, as my husband was talking to a lady, a
+very important looking man came up and shook her solemnly by the hand.
+"We're glad to welcome you, Mrs. Laird," he said; "I have already met
+your husband--and I hope you'll feel at home amongst us."  Whereat
+Gordon got quite excited.  "Oh," he broke in, "this is not my
+wife--here," as he beckoned to me, "this is Mrs. Laird"--and I hurried
+forward.  I cast a swift glance at the woman he had taken for me, and
+my cheeks burned with indignation.  She was very religious, as I
+learned afterwards--but she was forty if she was a day, and dressed as
+if she had just come out of the ark, and wore a bonnet that might have
+been an heirloom in the family.  However, I forgave her, being secretly
+thankful that it was not I.  She was a stranger, I learned, from
+another church.
+
+In a few minutes Mr. Ashton--for such proved to be the gentleman's
+name--was deep in conversation with me and Gordon.
+
+"Yes," he went on, after some casual remarks, "your husband has fell on
+his feet all right."  I started a little at the grammar; for Mr. Ashton
+was bedecked in the best of clothes, and had one or two diamonds about
+his person into the bargain.  "We had forty-three applications when our
+pulpit became vacant--and it was quite a strain, picking out the man.
+You see, this is a very remarkable congregation," he went on in quite a
+wealthy tone, "and it's not every man could just suit us.  But I think
+you'll give us exactly what we want, Mr. Laird," he added, turning to
+Gordon; "your style suits me exactly," and he smiled very amiably at my
+husband.
+
+"I haven't anything but the Gospel, Mr. Ashton," Gordon replied, a
+little distantly I thought, "and I suppose that's what any of the
+forty-three would have given you."
+
+"Yes, yes," replied Mr. Ashton, toying with a ponderous seal that
+dangled from a very elaborate chain, "the Gospel's the thing.  Give me
+the Gospel--and the old Gospel too--none of your new-fangled ideas for
+me.  No man could have got St. Andrew's pulpit if I'd thought he
+believed there was two Isaiahs.  You don't believe in those new-fangled
+notions, of course, do you, Mr. Laird?"
+
+Gordon flushed slightly.  "I don't concern myself much with whether a
+truth is old or new," he answered presently, "so long as I believe it's
+the truth.  Even if it comes from the critics, I welcome truth from
+them as quickly as from any other source."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Ashton loftily, knitting his brows the
+while, "to a certain extent, that is.  But the old doctrines are good
+enough for me.  And--as I was saying, Mrs. Laird--we've got a very rich
+congregation; very rich," he repeated, drawing in his breath, "and, I
+hope, not without a sense of its responsibility too.  Last year we had
+a surplus of eight hundred dollars--no regular salary to pay, you
+see--and on my own motion, on my own motion, we voted seventy-five of
+it to foreign missions.  None of us felt the poorer for it, I'm
+sure--and I hope we'll be kept faithful to the end," he went on
+piously, "faithful to the end, Mr. Laird," as he turned again and
+smiled at Gordon.
+
+"I'd have gone in for giving the whole thing to missions," Gordon
+ventured boldly.
+
+"Very good, Mr. Laird; very good indeed, to a certain extent.  But we
+never expect our minister to bother with the finances," he said
+patronizingly.  "Our last minister got into trouble that way--was
+always preaching about the poor; talked a great deal about giving, and
+that sort of thing--used to preach some very worldly sermons.  And our
+people didn't take to it, didn't take to it at all, Mrs. Laird.  To be
+quite frank, our people want the Gospel and nothing but the Gospel--I'm
+that way myself; none of your financial or political sermons for me,"
+he concluded quite significantly.  "If our minister looks after his
+pulpit and gets up the kind of sermons we expect him to give,
+we'll--we'll run the finances all right, Mr. Laird."  Then he dangled
+his glittering fob again and smiled up at Gordon; for Gordon was half a
+head higher than he.
+
+"I'm afraid we're keeping you too much to ourselves, Mr. Ashton,"
+Gordon suddenly broke in, offering me his arm and starting to move
+away; "the others will want to speak to you," as he smilingly withdrew,
+a light in his eyes that I could interpret quite well, lost though it
+was on our prosperous parishioner.  Before we left, Gordon enquired
+quietly about Mr. Ashton, and we learned that he owned a huge factory
+and was quite the richest man in the church.  One or two declared he
+ran the whole institution, and that whatever he said was law.  I don't
+think this cheered Gordon very much.
+
+The two years that followed were trying ones for me.  It seemed as if I
+were on exhibition on every hand, and I felt nearly all the time as if
+I were at some kind of a public meeting.  The church had no end of
+societies, especially women's societies, and they all expected me to be
+present on every occasion.  I did my best but it was pretty hard.  I
+memorized the little prayer Gordon had written out for me--and broke
+down in the middle of it the first time I tried to deliver it.  It was
+like being lost at sea.  And one of the ladies afterwards, whose
+husband was very rich--he made it out of lard--told me not to be
+discouraged; she said their previous minister's wife made a living show
+of herself, time and time again, before she got to be able to pray
+properly.  So I stopped right there, without further exhibition.
+
+I bravely attempted teaching a class in the Sunday-school.  Things
+didn't go so badly for the first three Sundays, although the boys asked
+some questions that dreadfully embarrassed me; I told them they must
+think these things out for themselves.  But the fourth Sunday two of
+them fell to fighting--over a big glass alley--and they had a quite
+disgraceful time.  There was bloodshed.  It really quite unnerved me,
+as I didn't know the minute they might break out again; so in about six
+weeks I gave that up.
+
+Another thing discouraged me a good deal--and that was that we were
+comparatively poor.  Although the congregation was composed so largely
+of rich people, they seemed to think--and Mr. Ashton openly
+avowed--that nothing injured a minister's spiritual life like having
+too much money.  So we were kept pretty safe that way.  But there was
+one lovely thing about the salary--and that was, the manse; within
+which Gordon and I made our home as soon as we came to Hertford.  It
+seemed a little small to me in comparison with uncle's big house at
+home; but we fixed it up till it was as sweet and cozy as any little
+home could be, and Gordon's delight was something to behold.  He said
+it was like a palace to him, and I was its lovely queen.  This was very
+melodious to me, for when Gordon said pretty things he meant them.
+
+However, it was rather trying, after all, to be so much harder up than
+many of our people.  Some of these seemed to love to ask me why we
+didn't keep horses; and whether or not we were going to Europe this
+summer; and how many servants we employed.  They knew right well all
+the time that we had enough to do to keep ourselves, and that we were
+about as likely to go to Mars as to Europe--it comforted me a little to
+know I could have gone if I hadn't fallen in love with Gordon--and as
+for servants, we had only our red-headed Harriet; but she was first
+cousin to the wife of one of the richest men in the church.  Their
+fathers were brothers, Harriet told me exultantly; but Harriet's had
+remained a mechanic, while Mrs. Newcroft's had become a manufacturer.
+Harriet generally got one afternoon in the week off; Mrs. Newcroft soon
+found this out, and always chose that day to call, lest Harriet should
+greet her as Mary Ann--which, in my opinion, she had a perfect right to
+do.
+
+It was a funny aristocracy we had in Hertford--about as cheerful, and
+hopeful, and mushroomy an aggregation as you could find anywhere.  So
+different from the South, it was; wealth didn't cut much of a figure
+with our old Southern families.  But the patricians of Hertford, for
+the most part, had bought their way to the seats of the mighty; and
+nearly all the blue blood was financially blue.  Some of the grand
+dames had been servants themselves in their early days; which was no
+disgrace to them, I'm sure, only it was amusing to see how they looked
+down on servants now.  In fact, I often felt how discouraging must have
+been their arduous efforts to build up an aristocracy at all; things
+would have gone pretty well, had it not been for some mean old
+outsiders who would insist on remembering back thirty or forty years.
+Those within the sacred circle generously forgot--each for the other.
+They let bygones be bygones, to their mutual advantage.  But outsiders
+had cruel memories.  Wherefore, just when they were getting their
+aristocracy nicely established, some of these inconsiderate old-timers
+would go rummaging in the past; and, the first thing we knew, they
+would stumble on an anvil, or unearth a plough, or a hod, or something
+of that kind--whereat the blue-blooded had to begin all over again.
+For the descendants of hod, or plough, or anvil, had somehow developed
+the greatest scorn for these honest trade-marks of other days.
+
+Gordon never said much to me--I heard him use the term "Shanghai
+nobility" once, with a smile--but I knew how he despised it all.  I
+could see his eye flash sometimes when some of them were getting off
+their little speeches, trying to let us know in what lofty society they
+moved and what superior folks they were.  Indeed, it became more and
+more clear to me that Gordon was never meant to be the minister of a
+rich congregation at all.  His father was a shepherd--it used to
+mortify the grandees of St. Andrew's dreadfully to hear him say so--and
+Gordon was full of the simple sincerity and manly independence that I
+felt sure must have marked his ancestors.  And I don't think Gordon
+ever preached a sermon without unconsciously making them feel that he
+was independent of them, if ever a man was, which was the simple truth,
+for my husband had his warrant from far higher hands than theirs, and I
+don't think he knew what it was to feel the fear of man.
+
+Wherefore it came about, and it is not to be wondered at, that Gordon
+found a great deal of his work among the poor.  Little by little, to
+the dismay of many of the aristocrats, he added to the number of the
+lowly that made their church home in St. Andrew's.  And he founded, and
+cherished, a mission chapel in Swan Hollow, one of the most degraded
+parts of the city.  I really believe the rich were jealous of the poor,
+for Gordon seemed to love them best and to be happiest when he was
+among them.  But the poor people worshipped him for it--and I believe I
+did too.
+
+Oh, how I envied him!  For he seemed to have a source of happiness of
+which I knew nothing.  I can remember, when my days were full of teas,
+and at-homes, and all sorts of social functions, how much more full and
+satisfying his life seemed to be than mine.  Sometimes I would get
+Harriet to make a little jelly, or some delicacy of that sort, for the
+poor sick folks he used to tell me about; but Gordon gave them his
+heart, his life, his love--and that made all his work a perpetual joy
+to him.  This was the deep spring from which he drank--and I had no
+part in it at all.  I used to punch the score cards at evening parties,
+and sometimes I played for the dancers as before--thus did my poor
+hungry heart nibble at the phantom crumbs that fell from the rich man's
+table.  But both my heart and I were starving.
+
+It strikes me as wonderful, now that I sit and look back upon it all,
+how inevitably, and by what different paths, and under what varying
+influences I came closer to Gordon's side.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_A KNIGHTLY GUEST_
+
+"Do you suppose we could afford a carriage for the Ashtons' dinner?" I
+asked Gordon one evening, the evening before the function in question.
+
+Gordon hesitated.  "I'm afraid not, my dear," he said; "surely it isn't
+very far to walk."
+
+"Everybody else will have one," I remonstrated, a little ruefully.
+
+"Well," he answered cheerfully, "most of them can afford it better than
+we can.  And those who can't," as he smiled, rather disdainfully I
+thought, "a good many of those who can't, will have one just the
+same--even if they daren't look the butcher and the baker in the face.
+There are a good many like that in Hertford, you know--in St. Andrew's
+Church, for that matter, I'm afraid," he added.  "But a minister
+couldn't afford that any better than the other," he concluded, reaching
+for the elaborate invitation I held in my hand the while.
+
+"Gordon," I said suddenly, and I fear my face showed what prompted the
+question, "have you ever thought what a good time we'd have had, if you
+had been something else--if you had been a doctor, I mean, or a
+politician, or something of that sort?  Or a lawyer," I added; "yes, a
+lawyer--what a stunning lawyer you'd have made, Gordon.  You'd be
+getting five times your present income, if you'd been a lawyer."
+
+"Nonsense," he said, in his rather blunt Scotch way.
+
+"It's nothing of the sort," I answered.  "You know as well as I do
+there are a dozen lawyers in Hertford who could buy and sell you over
+and over again, so far as money is concerned--and they haven't got half
+the brains you have--aren't in the same class with you as public
+speakers.  And yet here you are, the minister of a lot of fashionable
+people and----"
+
+"We have a good many now that aren't fashionable, thank heaven," he
+interrupted, as if he were quite proud of it; "you'd be surprised,
+Helen, if you only knew how many poor people have connected with St.
+Andrew's since I came.  But that doesn't please you much, does it,
+dear?" a shadow coming over the eager face.
+
+"Why?" I asked.  Yet I knew the meaning and the truth of his words.
+
+"You don't love the poor people," he answered, his words coming slow,
+as if with pain; his eyes pleadingly fixed on mine.
+
+"What makes you say that, Gordon?" and my voice shook a little.
+
+"Because I see it every day, dear.  You don't care for that part of my
+work at all," and his voice was inexpressibly sad.  "I know what you
+mean by what you've just said--about wishing I had been a lawyer."
+
+"I didn't say I wished it--you know I didn't," I corrected vigorously.
+
+"But that's what you meant.  I know it--I've known it long.  Oh, my
+darling," he suddenly broke out, like one owning at last to a
+long-hidden pain, "do you think I've been blind to it all?  Do you
+think I haven't seen the noble efforts my brave little wife has made to
+be interested in my work--and all her disappointment that we're poor
+and humble--and her longing for the things that I can never give her.
+And yet you've been so lovely and unselfish about it all, my dear one,
+trying to hide it from me," and I could feel my cheeks burn with shame
+at the words.  One of his arms was partly round my neck, his hand
+toying with my hair; and he drew me close and held me tight.  The
+shelter was wondrous sweet.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I said, the tears coming as I spoke, "don't talk to me
+like that; please don't--you know I was so young.  And I never had any
+experience like this--I was brought up so differently.  And I do want
+to be happy--so much, I want to be happy.  And you, dear, I want you to
+be happy too."
+
+"And so I am," he exclaimed passionately--"except that I'm lonely; I'm
+so lonely, Helen.  Oh, if you only loved the things I love, the poor,
+the sick, the sorrowing--if you only loved them all, and loved to help
+them--I wouldn't trade places with the richest and the grandest of them
+all."
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I sobbed, "how could you say it?--you mean you'd trade
+now!  And I've tried so hard."
+
+He soothed me, caressing and comforting as though I were a child.
+"It's been hard for you, my darling," he murmured in my ear; "and you
+don't know all you've been to me--you really don't."
+
+"It was only because I thought you were so clever," I sobbed out like a
+baby; "and I thought you weren't--weren't getting your reward."
+
+"Oh, child, you don't know what rich rewards there are," he said
+dreamily; "what rich rewards--if men only knew where to look for them."
+
+I lay a long time in his arms, the imposing invitation unheeded on the
+floor.  And I longed--I believe I prayed in a faint kind of way--that I
+might yet know something of the secret joy that made up my husband's
+hire.  Yet I was almost in despair; for the image of all that others
+did, and all they had, and the vision of what might also have been
+ours, kept recurring to my mind.  I thought our life was pretty gray,
+its limits hard and stern, and I may as well be candid enough to say
+so.  But I think I would have followed Gordon anywhere--if I could only
+have found the way.  My gropings for it must have been pathetic.
+
+"I'll give up the Ashtons' dinner," I said heroically at last, looking
+up at Gordon through my tears.  I knew he would kiss me--and he did.
+
+"But you shan't," he said firmly.  "You'll go--and so will I.  That's
+the one little triumph I'll never give up; I'm always so proud of my
+wife at times like that--we can beat them on their own ground."  Then
+he stooped down and recovered the gleaming-edged cardboard from the
+floor.
+
+This invitation was our passport to what was evidently to be a very
+swell dinner at the Ashtons'.  They had a lion in the house--a mighty
+guest, I mean by that.  He was a Sir; not only a Sir, but a Baronet;
+which, it seems, is a loftier brand, a repeating kind of Sir.  His full
+name was Sir Austin Beachcroft, and he was a British brewer.  His
+appearance gave abundant indication that he was one of his own best
+customers.  Mr. Ashton, it seems, had met him while crossing the
+Atlantic, and the Baronet was graciously stopping off for a visit of a
+day or two on his way to the Rockies to hunt grizzlies.  He arrived on
+a Saturday night; and it was impressive to see the solemn hush that
+came over the congregation in St. Andrew's when the Ashtons led their
+Baronet down the aisle the next morning.  Mr. Ashton came first, and
+there was a look on his face that showed his doubt as to whether or not
+he was a mortal man.  They came late, of course, but I attribute that
+to Mrs. Ashton--for that is a womanly wile.  I caught a glimpse of her
+face as she passed--it bore a look of thankfulness, almost of heavenly
+bliss, as if she were now ready to depart in peace.  In an adjoining
+pew I could see Harriet's cousin; vainly she strove to join the
+swelling psalm, gazing at the procession as though she considered the
+ways of Providence unjust.
+
+The Baronet, throughout the service, bore himself as piously as though
+he had never heard of beer.  Yet it was evident enough that he never
+for one moment forgot that he was a creation of his Sovereign.  When
+the hymns were being sung, he looked abstractedly in front of him, as
+though they were addressed to him; at sudden intervals he would break
+in and sing about half a line, just to show that he was human like
+ourselves.  Every now and then, while the sermon was in progress, he
+would cast a swift glance around to make sure that everybody was
+looking at him; finding that they were, a little jerk and a stare
+heavenward evinced the slight irritation that rank or genius is
+supposed to feel in being thus remarked.  Once or twice he snapped his
+watch when Gordon didn't stop just when he might have done.  This set
+me against him at once, for the sermon was a beautiful one; besides, I
+knew what ailed the Baronet--he wasn't accustomed to go so long without
+a sample of his wares.  When the collection was taken up, he was human
+enough; even Mr. Ashton started a little at the size of his deposit;
+for he gave after the fashion of his fathers, which, as Gordon
+afterwards told me, was formed in the copper age.
+
+Well, the very next night came the dinner; to which Gordon and I
+sallied forth.  It does make a woman wince a little when she finds
+herself coming on foot to a gate quite surrounded by the carriages of
+her fellow guests.  Harriet's cousin, I remember, alighted from her
+equipage just as I arrived, and we went in together; it was but poor
+comfort to reflect that my servant called her Mary Ann.
+
+"You're the belle of the ball," Gordon whispered to me as we came down
+the stairs a few minutes later; "I'll bet a sovereign the Baronet will
+write home about you before he goes to bed."
+
+"Don't be surprised," I answered gaily, "if I take to the woods as soon
+as I meet him--you know, I never saw a real two-legged lordling before."
+
+We were duly presented, the Baronet staring at us as though we were so
+many pretty fawns reclaimed by civilization from the wilds.  Harriet's
+cousin was as red in the face as a turkey-cock, and her attitude was
+one of reverence itself.  Mr. Ashton stood apart in a state of
+semi-unconscious bliss, looking like a kind of glorified Barnum.  His
+wife was torn between feverish glances towards the glittering table
+that could be seen in the distance and longing looks fixed upon the
+Baronet.  She was wondering how she might properly surrender herself to
+be borne in to dinner.
+
+In due time, however, we were all seated, my escort proving the wealthy
+husband of the woman who had comforted me about my prayer--he was the
+magnate who had made his money out of lard.  My first remark to him,
+after we were seated, disclosed my ignorance of the proper
+pronunciation of his name.  I suppose I was nervous.  He corrected me,
+adding in fine original vein: "But call me what you like, as long as
+you don't call me too late for dinner," spreading his napkin over an
+expanse that indicated his counsel was probably serious enough.
+
+At this juncture Mr. Ashton asked Gordon to say grace; and the tone of
+his request showed how highly honoured he considered both the Almighty
+and his minister to be by the observance.  This finished, there
+followed that peculiar silence which so often wraps a self-conscious
+company, all of whom are bent on conducting themselves with unusual
+propriety.
+
+But the Baronet was soon in midstream, his spirits rising higher and
+higher as he remarked the deference with which his every word was
+greeted.  "Yes," he was saying when I first caught the drift of his
+talk, "I had a great time in New York--was fairly beset with their
+reporters, though, all wanting interviews.  They're a great lot, those
+New Yorkers," he went grandly on, "nearly all of them either colonels
+or millionaires--any one who isn't one or the other is sure to be a
+judge.  Greatest conglomeration of newly rich I ever saw in my
+life--but it's wonderful how they worship what they haven't got.  A lot
+of humbugs," he added scornfully, "pretending to despise titles the way
+they do--and yet they fairly worship them.  The Duke of Marlborough
+happened to be in New York the same time as me; and, really, there
+didn't seem to be anything else in the papers except our movements--we
+simply couldn't sneeze, without it being in the papers.  Oh, they're
+very young yet," he added patronizingly, "they're very young indeed."
+
+"Mrs. Laird's a Yankee, Sir Austin," one of the lady guests ventured
+timidly, designating me by a sideward glance.  I dare say I wasn't hard
+to identify, for I know my cheeks were blazing and my eyes flashing.
+It's wonderful how much dearer your country grows when you're in exile.
+
+The Baronet adjusted his monocle and looked at me with some interest
+across the table.  "Well," he began with a very condescending smile,
+"there are some nice Yankees, you know--for instance," nodding at me as
+he spoke.
+
+"I'm not a Yankee," I broke in with vehemence.  "I'm no more a Yankee
+than you are, sir."  I forgot all about the handle to his name.
+
+"Were you addressing Sir Austin?" Mr. Ashton interrupted, meaning
+reproof; he was so horror-stricken that he had brought his erstwhile
+busy jaws to a sudden standstill.
+
+"I was addressing anybody who calls me a Yankee," I retorted,
+controlling a voice that would shake in spite of me.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Laird," the informant of a moment ago interjected, "I always
+understood you were an American."
+
+"I suppose I am," I returned, commanding a smile by this time--"but
+that's a very different being from a Yankee.  And I don't know whether
+I am or not," I went on with a quite ardent heart; "because I'm a
+Southerner--my father was a Confederate soldier," I broke out,
+regardless of the canons of good taste, "and he was wounded twice at
+Gettysburg, so he was."
+
+"Did he recover?" the Baronet enquired, in a tone that was meant to be
+sympathetic.
+
+I stared at the man.  "Did he recover?" I echoed; "how long do you
+think it is since Gettysburg was fought, Sir Austin?"
+
+I verily believe the title was music to the man.  In any case, he
+mellowed perceptibly.  "It was a foolish question--from any one who has
+ever seen you," he admitted; "and they were a brave lot of men, even if
+they did get beaten," he continued cordially enough; "they put up a
+great fight, did those rebels, Mrs.--er?" as he paused for my name.
+
+This was too much.  "They weren't rebels," I flung back; "nobody has a
+right to call them rebels--they were soldiers fighting for their
+country--and they weren't beaten, they were starved," I added; and I
+wouldn't have cared if he had been the proudest duke in England.
+
+The lordlet adjusted his monocle afresh and took a wondering look at
+me.  I do not know what reply, if any, he was about to make; for just
+then came an interruption fraught with more of consequence than would
+have appeared likely on the surface.
+
+"Mr. Laird's wanted, sir," announced a servant.  Wherewith Gordon
+excused himself for a moment and hurried out to the hall.
+
+"I'll have to ask you to let me run away, Mr. Ashton," he said,
+returning after a brief absence.  "I'm afraid I'll have to go."
+
+"What!" exclaimed our host incredulously; "have to go!--the dinner's
+only just begun, sir."
+
+"I'm very sorry," replied my husband, "but I've been sent for--somebody
+wants me, and I must go," with which he turned back into the hall, for
+Mr. Ashton had already risen from his chair.  He was still protesting
+as he followed him out; the talk around the table began again, but I
+could still catch the conversation in the hall.
+
+"You can't possibly get away; I was counting on you, as you know, to
+propose the health of Sir Austin.  I'll send word that you'll come the
+first thing in the morning--whoever it is that wants you."
+
+I couldn't catch the response; but I knew right well what line it would
+take.
+
+"No, I don't think they belong to St. Andrew's," I heard Gordon a
+moment later; "not as far as I know, at least.  They're very poor, I
+should fancy, from the quarter they live in."
+
+"Then it seems to me you're under no obligation to go," I could just
+hear Mr. Ashton saying, in a tone that chilled me; "you'll find it
+quite enough, I imagine, to look after your own people.  What's the
+matter anyway?"
+
+"I don't know," said Gordon, "but the messenger said they wanted me
+right away--it's a matter of duty, Mr. Ashton."
+
+Just with this Mr. Ashton drew the door shut behind him.  I did not
+wait to analyze the impulse that suddenly seized me, but hastily arose,
+with a word of apology to my hostess, and slipped swiftly out into the
+hall.  I do not think either of the men noticed me.
+
+"Well, all I've got to say is this," Mr. Ashton was exclaiming, "that I
+consider it a slight to my guest--a downright slight, sir; an insult, I
+might almost say, to Sir Austin Beachcroft.  And I know he'll have his
+own opinion of it, sir--and you can explain to him yourself--I'll make
+no apologies for you, mind."
+
+Gordon replied just the way I would have expected him to: "I don't care
+a rap for all the Sir Austins in the kingdom," he said, moving on up
+the stairs to get his coat; "it's probable some one's dying--and wants
+me."
+
+Mr. Ashton followed a step or two up the stair.  "I suppose I may take
+that to mean," his voice now thick with anger, "that you don't care a
+rap for me either; nor for anybody else of the people that--that hire
+you--and pay you, Mr. Laird," the words coming hot and hissing, his
+flaming face turned up towards Gordon at the top of the stairs.
+
+I could see Gordon's eyes flash from where he stood.  "If you think I'm
+your hired servant, Mr. Ashton--or anybody else's, when my duty's
+concerned--you'll find out your mistake.  We needn't carry this
+discussion any further," as he turned and went into the dressing-room.
+
+"I'll carry it further, sir," Mr. Ashton half shouted in a tone so loud
+I feared his knightly guest would hear; "I'll carry it till I teach you
+which side your bread's buttered on--I'll see you from the pulpit to
+the door.  It was me that got you here--and I'll get you out, sir, I'll
+get you out," he flung as a parting threat, turning to make his way
+back to the dining-room.
+
+My course was clear.  I passed our angry host without a word as I
+climbed the stair; the most ardent days of love and courtship had never
+found my heart so hungry for the man I loved as it was that moment.
+
+"You must not come," said Gordon, as I swept into the room where he
+was.  "What made you leave, dear--please go back.  Things are bad
+enough as they are."
+
+But I sealed his lips with my burning own and held him one moment in my
+arms before I turned to make ready for departure.  I could see his face
+brighten with a wonderful light, and I had my reward in the pride and
+fondness with which his eyes rested on me.
+
+Nobody intercepted, nor did any speak to us, as we made our way out to
+the street.  The night was dark, a few heavy rain-drops beating in our
+faces.
+
+"Where are you going now?" Gordon asked me as we moved away from the
+gate.
+
+"I don't know," said I--"only I'm going with you."
+
+"My darling!" was all he said.
+
+"I'm afraid there's going to be a storm," I predicted, looking up at
+the ill-omened sky after we had walked a little way in silence.
+
+"The storm is past," he said, his arm stealing about me in the dark;
+"the night is growing beautiful to me--oh, my wife, my darling!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_MY ORDINATION_
+
+We had walked for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes before we came near
+our destination, the character of the neighbourhood gradually
+indicating that the spot we were seeking was near at hand.  One or two
+enquiries sufficed to locate the house, a tumble-down old cottage that
+stood in a little from the street.
+
+"Be you the minister?" asked a woman's voice, as she opened the door in
+answer to our knock, shading the lamp with her hand; "be you Mr. Laird?"
+
+"Yes," said Gordon, "I came as soon as I got your message; and what can
+I do for you?"  Although I think he surmised why she had sent for him;
+there is that in a mother's face and voice which only one kind of
+sorrow gives.  Besides, he had seen a light burning dimly in the little
+room at the end of the house.
+
+"It's our Jennie," the woman said, standing transfixed a moment as the
+light of the lamp fell on me.  For I was still in my dinner dress; and
+I was holding the train up in my hand, and there were flowers in my
+hair.  Neither of us, I imagine, had thought of this.
+
+"This is my wife," said Gordon; and I never heard him say it with more
+tenderness or pride--nor had it ever sounded sweeter.
+
+The sad and tired face, still wondering, gave me a faint smile of
+welcome as we passed within the door.
+
+"You can stay in the room," she said, leading the way into what I
+supposed they might call the parlour.  At least, there was a table in
+it, and one or two chromos on the wall; but I noticed a dishevelled
+couch in the corner, evidently for some tired watcher.
+
+"Jennie's been wantin' ye for long," the woman said to Gordon as she
+set the lamp on the table; "but she's worse the night, an' me an'
+Martha got afraid.  Besides, she was askin' for ye; she went to the
+Bethany Sunday-school, sir, and she often saw you when you was
+there"--this was Gordon's mission school--"you put your hand on her
+head once, at the festival, I think, an' poor Jennie never forgot it,
+she was that pleased.  But I'm feared she'll never be back there again,
+sir," the woman's voice quivering as she turned her face away.
+
+"What's the matter with your daughter?" I asked, for my whole heart
+went out to the woman in her grief.
+
+"Well, ma'am, we don't hardly know.  But it began with a cruel bad
+cough more'n six months ago--an' it keeps always gettin' a little
+worse.  She got it at the factory--her and Martha both worked in the
+knittin' factory, an' the air was so bad, and the hours was so long;
+but she just had to keep workin' on, ma'am, 'cause their father's dead,
+and there's two younger than them.  I earn a little now an' again,
+goin' out washin'--but it was really Jennie and Martha that kep' the
+home goin'," the woman concluded, heaving a weary sigh.
+
+"What factory was your daughter in?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, in Mr. Ashton's--Ashton & Quirk," the woman answered, "an' they
+don't seem to care anythin' for the hands--excep' gettin' the work out
+o' them," she added, with another sigh; "Jennie wanted to stop and
+rest, first along, when she wasn't feelin' good--but they said another
+girl would get her job if she stopped.  So she had to go on as long as
+she could.  I guess we'll go in now, sir; we won't be long, ma'am," as
+she led Gordon from the room.
+
+As I sat alone I could hear the dull hacking cough at frequent
+intervals, sometimes with sounds of struggle and of choking.  Then
+would come a stillness, broken by the low sound of voices; and soon I
+could catch Gordon's rich tones in prayer.  I could not hear the words,
+but a nameless power seemed to accompany the sound; I knew that his
+very heart and life were being given to the holy task.
+
+A few minutes later Gordon came softly into the room where I was
+waiting.  "Come on in," he said; "come on in and see Jennie.  I'm sure
+it would do her good."
+
+I hesitated.  "Is she dying?" I asked.
+
+Gordon nodded.  "It's consumption," he said.
+
+"Oh, Gordon, don't ask me to go.  I'm so frightened of death; and I
+couldn't help her any--I couldn't say a word," for if I ever felt my
+helplessness, it was then.  "I'm afraid I would only be in the way," I
+supplemented, not without much sincerity.
+
+"A loving heart's never in the way," my husband answered in the lowest
+tone.  His face, radiant a moment before from its sacred duty, was now
+shadowed with sorrow; his eyes gave me a final glance of loneliness and
+longing as he turned to go back to the dying bed.
+
+"Oh, Gordon, wait," I cried faintly, sudden resolve gathering in my
+heart.  "Wait, darling, and I'll go," with which I hurried to his side.
+My reward was in his eyes.  I could see them, even in the darkened hall
+through which we passed into the room of death.
+
+Such a humble room it was, bare and unadorned.  The bed stood in the
+corner, and even my untutored eyes saw at a glance that life's race was
+nearly run for her who lay upon it.  Large, dark eyes looked out at me
+from the wasted face, wistful in death's mysterious appeal.  Poor
+Jennie! she little knew how great was the ministry yet remaining to her.
+
+For, as in a moment, the repulsion and the fear all left my heart,
+filling fast with a pity and a longing I could neither understand nor
+control.  It must have been God's prompting, and nothing else.  I saw
+nothing but the dying face.  The mother was there; and Martha, her
+cheeks wet with tears; the younger pair, too, were standing near the
+bed.  But I seemed to behold none of them--not even Gordon.
+
+For I moved instinctively towards the bed, my gaze fixed on the dying
+girl.  Her eyes seemed to call me; the lure of the eternal was within
+them, and I marvelled, little of spiritual insight though I had, at the
+deep tranquillity that lay far within.  She smiled as she saw me coming
+closer, and I sat down on the bed beside her.
+
+I could not but notice that her eyes rested on my face in eager wonder;
+she seemed to love to look, so constant was her gaze.  And it was
+evident--so eternal is the womanly--that she was attracted by what I
+wore; my lovely gown, the lace upon its bosom, the diamond pendant with
+its chain about my neck, the rich flowers in my hair--all made their
+appeal to the dying eyes.
+
+"Oh, it was lovely!" she murmured, after we had spoken a word or two.
+
+"What was, dear?" I answered, for I had no idea.
+
+"What he said--what your husband told me.  He made it so easy--and so
+beautiful.  I'm not afraid to die--not now, ma'am."
+
+I marvelled as I beheld the strange serenity that seemed to wrap her
+like a garment.  "Oh," she went on faintly, "it must be lovely to be
+able to do that; to be able to tell people, when they're dying, about
+the Saviour--and about heaven.  Do you do it too, ma'am?"
+
+I shrank before the pervading eyes, for they seemed to look through and
+through the soul with the penetrating power that death imparts.  "No,"
+I said tremblingly, "no, I don't believe I ever did."
+
+"But you will, won't you?" she went on calmly; "he'll tell you how--and
+you'll tell it too.  Oh, it comforts so--I believe it because he does,"
+her eyes turning now in reverence to Gordon's face.
+
+"Yes, dear, yes, I'll try," I faltered, and the eager eyes looked
+content.  Something prompted me to put my hands to my hair, though I
+had forgotten the flowers were there.  "Would you like them, Jennie?"
+as I placed them in the wasted hand.  I had no need to ask, so grateful
+was the light that kindled the wan face.
+
+"These comfort too," she murmured.  Then suddenly: "Can you sing?--I
+love when people sing to me, if I love them."
+
+"Not very well, Jennie," I answered, for I knew I could not trust my
+voice.
+
+"Please do," she pleaded; "just some little song."
+
+I turned to Gordon; he was standing above me.  "Let us try," he said;
+"suppose we sing 'Forever with the Lord'?"
+
+I consented.  But a quick impulse came to me and I whispered to him:
+"One of your psalms, Gordon--that lovely one about the Valley."
+
+I saw how glad he was.  "You must sing it too," he said; and then, in
+tones of more than womanly gentleness, he began the noble strain.
+
+  "Yea though I walk in death's dark vale
+    Yet will I fear none ill,
+  For Thou art with me and Thy rod
+    And staff me comfort still."
+
+
+I didn't know then, and hardly know exactly yet, what those two last
+lines really mean; but no one could fail to see their power.  They have
+been often tested when life's lamp was burning low; and the far-off
+music of Immortality, whatever be the meaning of the words, echoes
+through them.  Jennie's face was beautiful to see.
+
+I had never had hour like to this.  I can remember yet how, once or
+twice, the thought of all the revelry I had left behind floated before
+my eyes; the lights, the flowers, the richly appointed table, the
+sumptuous dinner, the circle of exalted guests in glorious array, the
+speech and the echoing song--but they all seemed to me now as the dust
+beneath my feet.  Pale and tawdry, garish, did it all appear in
+contrast with the high reality of the scene that had succeeded it.  It
+must have been God's miracle to my soul.  I know not.  But I speak only
+the simple truth when I say that what was about me now, the humble
+home, the squalid room, the dimly burning lamp, the wail of the
+broken-hearted, the pale light of death upon one wasted face; these
+stood before me as life, very life--and the other had receded into the
+phantom shadows of unreality and death.  I felt as if I had found
+myself at last; I knew I had found my husband, long sundered by the
+cruel shadow my own foolish heart had cast; and I dimly hoped that the
+dear Father of us all had found us both.
+
+An hour or two later Gordon beckoned me out into the little hall.  "I
+guess we'll have to go now," he said; "it's almost midnight--and you'll
+be tired out."
+
+"Don't," I said earnestly, "don't make me go, Gordon.  How can we leave
+here?--she's dying.  Do you think we'll ever see her again?"
+
+Gordon's look of love was beautiful.  "No," he said, "never again,
+here--and we'll wait, my darling," the words coming low and passionate.
+"Look," as he cast his eyes within the door, "she wants you--she's
+motioning for you."
+
+Which was true enough, and in a moment I was bending over the dying
+form.
+
+"You'll comfort mother, and Martha, won't you--and the children--when
+I'm gone?  Poor Martha, she'll have it all to do now," the words coming
+faint and pitiful; "all the work, I mean--she works so hard.  And she
+has to go to the factory, even after she sits up all night."
+
+"I'll do all I can, dear," I promised, trying to speak calmly, though
+the tears were running down my cheeks.  "I'll come and see them as
+often as I can."
+
+"Call them all," she said, rousing herself.
+
+I had not far to call.  In a moment they were all about the bed.  Then
+the emaciated arms stole out and laid hold of a rusty napkin, or towel,
+that lay upon the bed beside her.  Slowly she unfolded it, producing
+its contents one by one.
+
+"This is for you, Ernie," as she handed the little brother a
+many-coloured flashing tie; "I saved up to get it for you for
+Christmas--but then I knew I'd have to get it sooner.  And I made this
+for you, Chrissie," as the thin hands held out a little pin-cushion to
+the younger sister.  "And I want you to have my little locket for a
+keepsake, Martha; it's nearly new.  And this is for you, mother," as
+the sobbing woman bent above her child; "it's my Sunday-school
+Bible--and it has the tickets I was saving for a prize; I can't ever
+use them now.  And the book-marker that's in it is for you," as her
+eyes turned to Gordon; "I worked it for you myself, and I was going to
+give it to you the first Sunday you came down."
+
+She sank back, exhausted.  One by one they turned away, each bearing
+the precious treasure.  Gordon held his book-marker out before him like
+a sacred thing, and I could see his breast heaving as his arm went
+round one of the children.  My own eyes were streaming, for I had never
+witnessed scene so holy; the last will and testament of prince or
+magnate had never majesty like this.
+
+Suddenly Jennie motioned me down beside her again.  "I didn't have
+anything for you," she murmured in pitiful explanation, "because I
+didn't know you were coming.  So I just give you my--my love," she
+faltered low, "and I want to tell you how much you've helped me--to
+die.  And you'll often do it, won't you?" she went on, reverting to the
+request that must surely have been prompted by none but God Himself,
+every word burning its way to my inmost heart.
+
+"Yes," I sobbed, "oh, yes, I will, if God will help me--but I can do so
+little."
+
+"No," she whispered back, "no--so much.  You don't know how much it
+helps, for a poor girl like me just to, just to see somebody
+that's--that's sweet and lovely," she said timidly--"and that wears
+pretty clothes.  Just to see somebody that loves you, even if they
+didn't speak a word--that helps a lot."
+
+I gently hushed the words.  The little circle gathered around the bed
+again.  The hours went slowly by.
+
+Suddenly her eyes opened wide.  "Sing that again," she murmured,
+struggling now for breath; "that about--about the vale.  It's dark."
+
+Gordon looked into my eyes; his hand touched mine.  Then, in a tone
+that was part of tenderness and all of triumph, he began, my trembling
+voice blending with his own:
+
+  "Yea though I walk through death's dark vale
+  Yet will I fear none ill"
+
+and just as we finished the Shepherd Psalm the wasted face lighted up
+with pallid beauty, the raptured eyes looked their last farewell, and
+the tired toiler passed into the rest of God.
+
+
+It was a very solemn joy that wrapped our hearts as Gordon and I walked
+home together through the slowly breaking dawn.  I knew that our
+life-song had begun at last, and my heart was filled with reverent
+ecstasy.
+
+"Take me, Gordon," I said, as we entered and closed the door behind us.
+"Take me," the tears now flowing fast, "and never, never let me go."
+
+"You're mine," was all his answer as his arms closed about me.  "God
+gave me you, my darling."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH_
+
+It matters not how parched and bare the plain of life may be, one
+living spring of joy can enrich and beautify it all.  One master
+gladness can make the heart strong against all the ills of life; it
+matters not how fierce and angry be the winds, if the heart have
+shelter.  If God be for us who can be against us?
+
+Gordon and I had certainly had our share of the ills of life; and the
+winds of trouble had found us out.  Of course, it doesn't seem so hard
+to bear, now that it's past; but I reckon few young married couples
+ever encountered more head wind or sailed more troubled seas.  I know
+everybody thinks their own troubles are the worst; if we could trade
+with other people for a week, we'd probably be glad to trade back when
+the time was up.  Yet it cannot be denied, so far as we were concerned,
+that we had a good deal to sadden us.
+
+To begin with, we were far from home and kindred.  Gordon's
+relatives--he seldom spoke of any but his father--were far across the
+sea.  Mine were a thousand miles away, in the sunny Southland,
+separated from me now by the unhappy storm that had gathered about my
+husband's head.  We never spoke of going home; for Gordon, I knew,
+would not consider it, and I would not go without him.
+
+Then, too, there was little now to take me there.  My mother had passed
+away.  It was a couple of years after we came to Canada that the end
+had come.  Suddenly stricken with the hand of death while summering in
+the remote mountains of Western Virginia, the dear spirit had found its
+rest.  I could not be notified till it was too late to go, even for the
+last sad offices; so I went not at all.  The heavenly tenderness of my
+husband through all those days of sorrow lingers with me as a precious
+memory.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes wrote me once or twice, and always
+sympathetically enough.  But it was evident that they recognized
+through it all how wide was the gulf that divided me from the days and
+scenes of girlhood.  And they sent their "respects" to Gordon, which is
+about the politest form of epitaph that can be graven on the tomb of
+friendship.
+
+It was in the very midst of this parched and dreary plain (to quote the
+words with which I began the chapter) that a spring of living joy
+suddenly flung forth its waters; amid the troublous winds, our hearts
+found the dearest of all earthly havens.
+
+It seems hard to realize it now--but I don't believe Gordon and I were
+unhappy before baby came.  Unhappy, I mean, because there wasn't any.
+I don't think we ever felt that life was poor and skimped and silent; I
+don't believe we looked and longed at all.  No, we didn't--and that's
+the strangest part of it.  The troubles that people with children
+had--the imprisonment by day--and the marches by night--and the
+plaintive serenades of the early dawn; the care and responsibility and
+disappointment, and often heartbreak, of later years--these were so
+frequently mentioned between us that I fear we came to indulge a kind
+of blasphemous complacency because we were immune.  Then, too, we
+sometimes whispered the old sophistry that we had each other, in
+devotion undivided with another--which is nothing but a honeyed perjury.
+
+Anyhow I know this, that in those pre-parental days I would ask people
+whom I had just met--and with no misgivings--as to whether or not they
+had any children.  But I never dared to do it after the new love-birds
+began singing in my mother-heart.  It seemed cruel, lest they should be
+compelled with shame to acknowledge they had none; even in my most
+inconsiderate years I would never ask a homely spinster if her dance
+card were full--if I may pluck an illustration from the giddy days of
+old.
+
+It was with trembling joy that we drew near, never so near together, to
+this great gladness of our lives.  Then came my great darkness; then
+the holy dawn.  I swiftly forgot all about the darkness--for joy that a
+man was born into the world.
+
+Gordon was beside me when I realized it all, showering little timid
+words of endearment down upon me as though he feared I were hardly able
+to stand them.  His lip was quivering when I looked up; and I saw his
+glance turn from me to something that lay beside me on a pillow.  A low
+gurgling kind of sound came from the little bundle on the top of it.
+
+"Isn't that sweet?" I murmured--for I knew--my eyes fallen shut again.
+Gordon looked at me with overflowing eyes--then he turned and went
+softly out of the room.
+
+I was faint and weak when he came back; but I held his hand, lest he
+should go away again.
+
+"Say a little prayer for the baby," I whispered; "say it out loud," and
+Gordon knelt low beside the bed and prayed.  But I noticed that all his
+prayer was for me, that I might be given back to him--and I told him,
+before he had time to get up, that he had forgotten about the baby.  So
+he prayed again, for us both this time; and I don't think I ever before
+felt what a true priest of God was this man of mine, and I rejoiced
+that the new life which lay beside me was breath of his breath and soul
+of his soul.  And I think we both forgot, in those blessed days, all
+the sorrows of the past, the turmoil of the present, the portent of the
+future.
+
+What a new world it all turned out to me!  A new heaven, indeed; and a
+new earth--which was more to us just then--as the Bible says.
+Everything was wonderful.  I can remember yet the foolish delight with
+which one day I counted all the baby's toes--and found he had exactly
+ten.  I knew, of course, that this had happened often enough before,
+but still it struck me as beautiful that they should have come out so
+even; a miscalculation, considering how many have to be outfitted for
+the journey, would have seemed pardonable in anybody's baby but my own.
+And I had never known before how intelligent a baby could be in its
+very early dawn.  For instance, mine had a strange habit of lifting his
+little hand high above his head, then slowly letting it drop.
+
+"I can't make out what that gesture means," his father (those words
+were a new strain of music) said to me one day as we bended over the
+babe together; "you don't suppose he sees that fly, do you?" referring
+to a winged intruder that was hovering, like ourselves, above our
+treasure.
+
+"Oh, no," I answered; then suddenly, "Gordon, do you know, I believe I
+can tell what baby's trying to do.  He's trying to pronounce the
+benediction, just as sure as anything.  That's you in him, Gordon; he's
+going to be a minister."
+
+"I believe that's just what he's doing," said Gordon, enchanted;
+"look--there he's doing it again."
+
+"He does it just like you, Gordon," I repeated.  "Nobody need ever tell
+me there's nothing in heredity.  Isn't it wonderful?"
+
+"It's mysterious," said Gordon, fascinated as he watched the little
+cleric; "we'll have to call him some name suitable for a minister."
+
+"We'll call him Gordon," I said decisively--"that's a good Presbyterian
+name.  I called him that this morning, all alone, and he looked up and
+cooed like as if he understood."
+
+"We'll call him Harold, for your father, if you like," my husband
+proposed magnanimously.
+
+"No, no," I said, "his name shall be Gordon.  But we'll call it--I
+mean--we'll give mother's name to her--if he ever has a little sister."
+
+"Mercy!" said Gordon, drawing his breath in fast.
+
+"I always think just one's so lonely," I explained, my eyes fastened on
+the isolated posterity beside me.  "I was just one--the only one in our
+family, you know."
+
+"The only one in the world--for me," said Gordon, and he kissed me.
+"Look, your son's trying to sneeze: isn't it wonderful how soon they
+pick things up?"
+
+"_Our_ son, dear," I corrected reproachfully, after I had helped baby
+through.
+
+Gordon laughed.  "We're a pair of idiots," he said.  "We'll have to
+straighten up, Helen, or we'll spoil the youngster.  I can see you're
+going to idolize him already."
+
+"Love never spoiled anybody," I protested, "and it won't spoil him
+either."
+
+"No," conceded Gordon, "but he mustn't be indulged too much.  I believe
+in making them obey--and not giving in to them; that old adage about
+sparing the rod, you know."
+
+"He shan't ever be touched," I exclaimed; "nobody shall ever lay a
+finger on my baby."
+
+"_Our_ baby," corrected Gordon, smiling.
+
+"But about what you said about the rod," I resumed.  "You don't surely
+mean----"
+
+"Don't let us get excited, dear," and Gordon smiled down at me; "but of
+course children, and especially boys, must be taught to obey.  That's
+one of the great advantages of a public school."
+
+"He shan't ever go to a public school," I declared warmly.  "No child
+of mine will ever be sent with a lot of common children--in one of
+those big schools."
+
+"What will you do with them?" said Gordon, intensely interested.
+
+"I'll teach them myself," said I.  "I'll teach them together; I'll keep
+them together all the time.  There's no influence on a boy like his
+little sister."
+
+By this time Gordon was just as absorbed in them both as I was.  "You
+can train the girl the way you like," he said, stroking my hair while
+he spoke; "that's a mother's privilege--but I'll have to take a hand
+with the boy.  And I'm a firm believer in punishing them, when they
+need punishment."
+
+"Gordon," I pleaded, as my eyes filled with tears, "do you mean to say
+you'd whip him?"
+
+"Yes," said Gordon, very solemn; "yes, if he needs it."
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I cried, for it was all very real to me, "you'll make him
+afraid of you; he'll learn to dislike you, Gordon--and that would break
+my heart," the words quivering as they came.
+
+"There, there, dear," he said, gently caressing me, "don't let us say
+any more about it--perhaps I won't have to whip him much.  All I mean
+is, that I don't believe in children getting their own way; we mustn't
+indulge him, I mean.  And you know, dear," this coming with a very
+winning smile, "you know, I'm older--and I've had more experience than
+you, dear."
+
+"No, you haven't, Gordon," I cried triumphantly; "you shouldn't say
+that.  I've had just as many as you, Gordon--and I know them better;
+I've studied him more, right here with him all the time."
+
+But just then our solitary descendant broke out with an imperious cry
+that indicated he wanted something.  Gordon leaped to duty.  "It's his
+bottle," he exclaimed excitedly, beginning a wild search on the table,
+under the pillow, beneath the bed, the quest continued in the bathroom
+and an adjoining chamber.  "Yes, yes, baby," he kept saying as he
+searched; "yes, father'll get him his 'ittle bottle; he's hungy, is he,
+the tootsy wootsy?  Yes, father'll bing it in a minute."  The much
+desired article was finally discovered in the cradle beside the bed;
+and Gordon, in full canonicals, knelt lowly on the floor as he pacified
+the clamorous lips.
+
+"I thought you didn't believe in giving them their own way?" said I.
+
+"He's too little to know the difference yet," said the bending one, his
+back to me as he adjusted the mechanism anew.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I said, "you're very young, as a father--very young."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_THE TAINT OF HERESY_
+
+Our son was growing into a goodly lad (everything happened either
+before or after baby was born) when it first actually broke on me that
+Gordon's Doctorate had been a dear-bought prize.  For Gordon was now a
+Doctor of Divinity--and he had won it by examination, too, long years
+of severe study and wide reading having gone before.  I didn't begrudge
+the time, and the seclusion, this had implied; but I just hated the
+whole thing when I found out how it had affected Gordon's views.  I
+never did believe much in ministers being such terrible students as
+many of them are; I verily believe as many preachers are spoiled by
+books as are helped by them, for they often grow less human while
+they're growing more profound.  The Bible and the daily paper--truth
+and human life--some great preacher pronounced his two main books, and
+I'm inclined to agree with him.  Gordon gave me one of his deep books
+to read once--Harnack, I think, was the name of the man who wrote
+it--and I went to sleep over it for my husband's sake but not for Mr.
+Harnack's.  Gordon may call that kind of theology new, I thought, but
+it's not interesting.
+
+The whole thing--about Gordon's views, I mean--came out this way.  Of
+course I fancy a good many already suspected he was rather modern in
+his creed; especially Mr. Ashton, who became more orthodox every time
+he cut the wages of the poor girls in his factory.  But I never knew,
+nor any one else, how far Gordon had drifted from the old moorings,
+till a certain evangelist came to hold a mission in Hertford.  He was a
+converted prize-fighter--changed from a pounder into an ex-pounder, so
+to speak--and he loved to give us a whiff of his malodorous past every
+time he got a chance; I reckon he fancied any one who had had such a
+violent attack of sin was immune for the rest of his days.  I went to
+hear him several times; but one night he said if he had to choose
+between a pack of cards in his house or a rattlesnake turned loose
+among his children, he'd take the snake.  I knew then he was either a
+fool or a liar, one--and I had no mind to listen to either--so I never
+went near him again.
+
+However, Gordon was presiding one night when this man was preaching;
+and the evangelist suddenly broke out with the statement that the most
+moral, or the most philanthropic, man in the whole world would get as
+hot a place in hell as the worst murderer or thief, if he didn't
+believe what he ought to believe.
+
+"Isn't that so, Dr. Laird?" he said, turning to my husband.
+
+"No," said Gordon, "it's not."
+
+Well, as you may understand, there was something pretty to pay.  The
+evangelist nearly fainted on the spot; as soon as he came to himself he
+asked them all to join in prayer--and he prayed that Gordon might be
+converted that very night.  Gordon! whose shoe's latchet he was not
+worthy to unloose.
+
+"You've denied your Master, sir," Mr. Ashton accused Gordon afterwards,
+having waited for him at the door; "you've repudiated the great
+doctrine of salvation--in the presence of a thousand people, sir."
+
+Gordon motioned him aside.  When he told me all about it afterwards, he
+avowed himself ashamed of the degree of temper he had shown, but I said
+I'd have been ashamed of him if he hadn't.
+
+"What's this you accuse me of?" demanded Gordon.
+
+"You aren't fit to be a minister," affirmed Mr. Ashton hotly; "I'm
+ashamed of you as the pastor of St. Andrew's, sir."
+
+"Why?" pursued Gordon.
+
+"Because our church, sir, our church has always been noted for its
+orthodoxy.  We've always held to the simple Gospel--and you've gone
+back on it, sir.  I knew it was coming; I could tell it by the things
+you preached about."
+
+"What things?" although Gordon knew right well.
+
+"Well, take last Sunday for instance; you preached on the duty of
+employers of labour--a lot of stuff about fresh air, and short hours,
+and taking care of sick hands--a lot of unspiritual stuff like that.
+When I go to church, sir, I want the Gospel, the simple Gospel--and
+nothing but the Gospel.  Mr. Seybold's the same way; he says he's
+disgusted with many of your sermons, about worldly things.  You stick
+to the Gospel, sir, and worldly things will take care of themselves,"
+concluded Mr. Ashton, wagging his pious head.
+
+"You mean Seybold the brewer, don't you?" enquired Gordon.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Ashton; "and he's one of the richest men in our church,
+as you know yourself."
+
+"I don't know anything about it," was Gordon's curt reply; "but I don't
+wonder at his zeal for the Gospel--or yours either.  I don't know any
+men that have more need to make their calling and election sure.  He's
+a vampire, sir--and so are you."
+
+"A what?" roared Mr. Ashton.  "I'm a what?"  He did not know what a
+vampire was, of course; but there was something in Gordon's voice and
+eye that made the word tell its meaning.  Gordon would have withered
+him just the same if he had called him a rectangular hypotenuse.
+
+"A vampire, I said," Gordon hurled back at him; "both of you live on
+the defenseless and the poor.  It's sickening," and Gordon's voice rang
+higher, "to hear you, or him, prating about the Gospel, while he makes
+his wealth out of human misery--and you, you oppress the poor--you
+grind their faces, and you know it.  You take your blood money from
+poor girls that have to toil in that sweat-box of yours--and you don't
+care whether they live or die, so long as they serve your selfish ends.
+I have visited more than one dying girl that got her death in your
+employ--as Jennie McMillan did--and you prance your horses past the
+door when they're dying, and even after the crape is on it, and you
+never stop to ask for them; and then you come prattling to me about not
+preaching the Gospel!"
+
+Gordon paused; out of breath, I reckon.  By this time quite a number of
+the crowd had eddied back, listening attentively, you may be sure, to
+this candid conversation.  One or two of them gave me a detailed
+account later on.
+
+"I appeal," blustered Mr. Ashton, "I appeal to those who know me.  I
+spoke to you as an officer of St. Andrew's.  I have been a faithful
+supporter of the church--and I've always paid my debts," he blurted out
+irrelevantly, hard put to it to make defense.
+
+"Ye ha'ena'," a squeaking voice came suddenly from the bystanders.
+
+Mr. Ashton turned sharply round.  "I haven't?--where's the man that
+dares to say I haven't?" he hectored, searching the group for the
+interrupter.
+
+"I'm the mon," came quietly from the lips of a little old Scotchman as
+he moved slowly to the front; "ye didna' pay oor Jock what ye owed him.
+He took the consumption workin' for ye," the squeaky voice went on,
+"an' when he lay deein', ye never lookit near him; an' the day o' his
+funeral, ye drove by the hoose wi'oot lookin' at us.  An' he was a
+foreman till ye for mair nor twenty year," the plaintive indictment
+proceeded--"an' ye owed him a wee bit mark o' respec' like that.  An'
+ye never paid it--but it's ower late noo."  Then the little man slipped
+back among the bystanders; Mr. Ashton followed him, loudly protesting
+that the dead servant had got his wages regularly, the second Tuesday
+of every month.
+
+Gordon took advantage of the diversion to move away; and the story,
+substantially as I have told it, was given to me on his arrival home.
+
+I did not question him closely about the original cause of the
+discussion--about his theological views, I mean; but it started an
+uneasiness that grew upon me day by day.  And a few weeks later I
+learned something more that did not reassure me much.
+
+I was sitting with Harold--we had named our son Gordon Harold; but the
+latter half was what we called him, to avoid confusion--one evening in
+the study; two ministers, visitors to some church gathering and guests
+of ours, were talking on the piazza.  By and by Harold grew silent, and
+so did I; which, I suppose, led the two brethren to think I had
+disappeared.  And they talked freely.
+
+"It's too bad," one of them said, whereat I sat up and listened, "that
+Laird's gone that way.  He can't hold those views, and his pulpit, at
+the same time."
+
+"Have you any idea what his views really are?" the other asked.
+
+"They're anything but sound," his friend replied, "and that's the plain
+English of it.  Any man who holds them has no right to be in the
+ministry."  My blood began to sizzle.  I knew this reverend brother--a
+comfortable pastor of a comfortable congregation, who spent most of his
+time simply trying to be "sound," to use his own word; saving doctrines
+and losing men, as I heard Gordon say once in a sermon.
+
+"What are they?" persisted the other.
+
+"Well," began the first, "I don't believe he's very sound on the
+miracles.  And then, he contends we're all divine--doesn't deny the
+divinity of our Lord, however.  But I think he often closes his prayer
+without saying 'for Christ's sake'; at least, so I've heard."
+
+"Perhaps he means it just the same," suggested his companion.
+
+"Then he ought to say it--a prayer that hasn't that doesn't go higher
+than the roof, in my opinion.  And I believe he contends no man can
+explain the Atonement--from an intellectual standpoint, that is.  He
+told me as much--I told him I could explain it all right.  He replied
+that he interpreted it more by his heart than his reason.  And that's
+dangerous ground, Mr. Forest, very dangerous ground."
+
+"Is that all?" the other enquired, evidently not overcome by the
+arraignment.
+
+"No, it's not.  They say he believes prayer has no power to influence
+the course of events--regards it only as a kind of pious communion;
+doesn't believe in praying for anything in particular, I'm told.  And
+he has his doubts as to who wrote the Hebrews.  I told him it was
+Paul--but he still seemed to have doubts.  And he thinks the Confession
+of Faith is too long and too intricate.  That's dangerous too--it's the
+thin end of the wedge, Mr. Forest, the thin end of the wedge," and from
+where I sat I could hear the censor shut his lips.
+
+"He's a mighty devoted minister, anyway," the other interposed; "I've
+had long talks with him myself.  And there's only one thing troubles
+me--I'm afraid, I really am, that he clings too much to a merely
+ethical Christ.  He's tinged with that, I'm sure; glories in Him as a
+Teacher, and Healer of mankind, and all that sort of thing.  Laird's a
+great healer himself, you know--he's a marvel with the sick, and the
+sorrowing, and the poor.  But I'm afraid he's drifting--he began with
+Drummond, and ended with Harnack."  I recognized the soporific name.
+
+"Oh, yes, there's another thing," resumed the orthodox one; "Laird has
+doubts as to whether or not sorrow comes from God.  Affliction, you
+know; bereavement, suffering, the death of little children--everything
+like that.  He's inclined, I'm afraid, to attribute it to another
+source--doesn't seem to be clear that it's God's will for us to
+suffer," and I could hear the comfortable one settling back in the
+softly-cushioned chair.  "Now, that never troubles me at all--I always
+feel certain our sorest sorrows come from God; was just saying so
+yesterday to a woman whose little boy was drowned.  He was her only
+child."
+
+"Did you ever lose a child?" the other minister asked quietly.
+
+"Oh, no, I've never had any trouble of that kind, thank God.  Ours are
+all well and strong.  By the way, Forest, our train goes in a little
+over an hour.  I suppose we'll have dinner before we go--it's tea here,
+I believe, in the evening.  Doesn't suit me altogether, either--I've
+had a new kind of life since I began taking dinner in the evening," as
+he rose from his chair and began to move restlessly about.
+
+I glided away noiselessly like one in a dream.  My heart was leaden,
+and I thought it was all for love of Gordon and dread of what might
+thus befall him.  My principal thought, as I remember, was of his
+relation to his work--and his position--and his future.  Yet I know now
+that what gave me the deepest pain was a trembling fear lest those
+things should slip from _me_--as from him--the things I reckoned the
+foundation stones of the life that was so happy now.  Without knowing
+it, ever since that night I saw Jennie die, the secret between my heart
+and Christ had been growing more rich and full.  I esteemed Him the
+meeting-place whereon Gordon and I had found each other; and I feared,
+though I could not have put it into words, that distance from Him would
+mean distance from each other.  Perhaps it was wrong; perhaps these two
+passions of my heart should have been reverently kept separate--but
+they were blended and intertwined in a union that was altogether holy.
+
+I kissed Harold gently as I bended over his bed and tucked him in an
+hour later; he stirred in his sleep as my hot tears fell upon his face.
+Then I knelt beside him--I remembered how my mother used thus to kneel
+by me--and I prayed, pleadingly, in the new-found way that had grown so
+dear.  My pleading was all for Gordon, passionate in its intercession,
+as though he were drifting out to sea, and God alone could bring him
+back.
+
+I was hardly risen from my knees when Gordon came home.  He came at
+once to where I was; and he smiled in that happy way he had, whenever
+he saw me bending over Harold.  It always seemed to delight him so.
+
+"You're an idolater, Helen, aren't you?" he said.
+
+I clung to him in a very spasm of fondness, as if he were slipping from
+me.  My heart cried out in a wild, hungry way, though my lips were
+still.  I wanted to call him back, back to the shelter where our life's
+happiness began.
+
+"And I don't blame you, dear," he went musingly on as he looked down on
+the rosy face; "life is all preface till you have children, isn't
+it?--the real volume comes after that."
+
+"I could die for him," I said.  (This was with a purpose.  I was
+trying, for the first time, a lesson in theology.  It struck me with a
+kind of amusing pain, my poor attempt to teach Gordon--Gordon so
+learned, so clever.)
+
+"So could I," he murmured.
+
+"It makes me understand how--how One died for us all," I faltered,
+coming to my point with desperate directness.  How the angels must have
+smiled if they heard my first attempt at preaching!  "It helps me
+understand how love and suffering must go together--God can't help it
+any more than we.  If I were a preacher, Gordon, I'd preach that all
+the time."
+
+He turned and looked at me in amazement.  Then his arms went round me
+tight.  "Darling," he said gently, "you're a lovely missionary--and I'm
+a heathen; I'm an idolater--like you--only you're my idol."
+
+"But you believe that, don't you, Gordon?" I urged, "that--what I said?
+You do, don't you, Gordon?"
+
+His eyes studied my face, and so gravely, for a moment.
+
+"Is my wife growing alarmed about me too?" he said, half seriously;
+"don't be uneasy, darling--your husband's sound, all right.  Only I
+still plead guilty to idolatry--kiss me, so I'll know you're human," he
+concluded, laughing.
+
+I kissed him, and more than once.  But my heart ached on.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_HAROLD'S SISTER--AND ANOTHER._
+
+The next saddest thing to having no children is having only one.
+Parental sorrows are to be classified as follows.  First, and greatest,
+if you haven't any; second, if you have only one.  For there is no
+loneliness like the forlornness of a solitary bairn, to use a term of
+which Gordon was very fond; born to play, yet having none to play with;
+in need of chastening, yet denied the discipline of other children;
+hungry for fellowship, yet starving among its seniors.  There is no
+desert so waste and weary as the Sahara that surrounds a solitary child.
+
+Life has few moments of surpassing thrill and wonder.  Yet there are
+some; and the loveliest thing about it all is this, that wealth cannot
+buy them, nor genius create them, nor rank command them.  The
+impartialness of God is beautiful.  A few of the superfluities do seem
+to be a little unevenly distributed--but the great holy luxuries of
+life are as freely vouchsafed the peasant as the king.  The glory and
+the beauty of life itself; the shelter of a mother's arms and the
+deeper shelter of her heart; the first dismantling kiss of love; the
+earliest glimpse of your first-born's face--these are for the ploughman
+as well as the poet or the prince.
+
+And there is another moment when life's so often tawny tide glows with
+the very light of heaven.  It came to me and Gordon the day he led
+little Harold in, to look upon his sister's face.  Ah, me! the tears
+start even yet when I recall the sacred scene.  I was lying there, so
+weak, so happy.  The slumbering babe lay beside me, gurgling now and
+then those mysterious sounds that a mother's heart translates so
+readily.  I heard them coming--Harold and his father--the strong tread
+mingling musically with the patter of the little feet.  Up the stairs
+they came, hand in hand along the hall, little Harold puffing with
+excitement, for he knew something wonderful was to be revealed.  I
+raised my head and saw them as they entered the room.
+
+Oh, my son, my son! why did I not value more those days of the dear
+childish face, as I saw it then?  Why did I not realize that the
+sterner days were coming when those sweet features were to be buffeted
+by sorrow and assailed by sin?  I see him now, the little torn straw
+hat above the neglected locks--for children _will_ run to seed when the
+mother is withdrawn--the plump, ruddy cheeks, all stained from the sand
+pile on the lawn, the dampness on the little forehead, the besmirched
+but becoming frock; and the eyes, wonderful eyes, so sober, so
+inquisitive, searching curiously for the unknown, breaking into shy
+laughter as they fell on me; the pudgy hand, quickly withdrawn from his
+father's; then the little frame, one half-bare leg dangling in the air,
+lifted high as Gordon held him up.  I feel again the tremble in my
+fingers as I pulled back the shawl from about his sister's head, and
+see again the long look of wonder as my son gazed down upon the baby's
+face; I see the tiny throat swallow once or twice as his emotion
+gathered, and think of the vast realm in his heart that even his father
+and I cannot explore.  Once again I see the refusing nod--his golden
+curls shaken the while--when I tell him to kiss his baby sister; his
+brooding eyes turned to mine, the outstretched arms, the rosy lips
+coming down to mine to be kissed; and I catch the mist in Gordon's
+eyes, my own swimming with tender joy, even as they are overflowing now
+so that I can hardly see to write.
+
+
+The years flew swiftly by, unmarked by incident of note, but full of
+simple joy.  Harold was well on his way in school--clever, like his
+father--and his sister had left the days of babyhood behind, when a new
+influence came into our quiet lives, a new Life into our little circle.
+
+It was our daughter's birthday night, and Gordon had asked some friends
+to dinner.  For, as I should have said before, he was simply crazy
+about Dorothy, which was the name we had bestowed upon our daughter--it
+had been my mother's.  Nobody need tell me that a father's master
+passion is anything else than his first-born girl.  Lots of men
+dissemble, I know, and profess to hold all their children in equal
+affection--but it's simply moonshine.  If I'm a specialist in anything,
+it's children; and I have satisfied myself over and over again that a
+father, nineteen times out of twenty, is the bondsman of his eldest
+daughter.  Dorothy looked like me; and I have a theory, which some
+cleverer brain will have to work out, that Gordon got her kind of mixed
+up with his sweetheart feelings, and loved the me that was in her, and
+the her that was in me.  Anyhow, he was simply crazy about her, as I
+have said--and for years I thought it quite unfair how he made Harold
+play second fiddle for Her Majesty the Baby.  And yet, strange though
+it sound, Harold was his very life--but we shall hear of this before my
+tale is told.
+
+Well, as I have reported, Gordon must have a dinner party.  It was to
+be in honour of Dorothy's original arrival, he said.  So we invited
+some of the very nicest people in the church, some of the most clever
+and refined, and some of the unspoiled rich.  (I believe the grand
+folks of St. Andrew's were coming to think more of Gordon every day.)
+And I got up the loveliest little dinner, with Harriet's aid of course,
+for she was as proud of Dorothy as we were ourselves.
+
+The dinner was just in mid-career, and everything was going splendidly,
+when all of a sudden Harriet came to the dining-room door and beckoned
+to me.  I could see by her face that it was something important.
+
+"There's an old man here," she said as the door closed behind us, "and
+I thought I ought to call you--he says he's related."
+
+"Related!" I echoed, "related to whom?"
+
+"To Dr. Laird, ma'am," Harriet answered.
+
+I knew there must be some mistake, since Gordon's relatives were all
+across the sea; besides, he had hardly any that I knew of, except his
+father.
+
+I hurried out to the kitchen.  As I entered, I saw the figure of a man
+well advanced in years; tall he was above the ordinary, but evidently
+stooped with toil.  He rose from his chair as I approached, and bowed
+with a kind of native grace.  Then he turned his face to mine and
+looked me over with one of the steadiest pairs of eyes that ever
+belonged to mortal.  They were deeply set, keen and bright; high cheek
+bones on either side; ruddy complexion, significant of health; great
+wavy folds of snowy hair fell almost to his shoulders, those shoulders
+wrapped in a kind of grayish plaid; flowing beard, white as the locks
+above.  His nose was prominent and strong, the mouth delicate, and
+firmly set, as though he had a mind of his own and knew how to use it.
+His clothes were coarse and plain, such as I fancied were worn by the
+peasants overseas; homespun stuff, I saw; and a flannel shirt, partly
+open, disclosed a sunburnt throat.  He came forward and held out his
+hand, which I noticed was hard and rough, its clasp firm and strong;
+the other hand held a long staff, crooked at the top; a bundle, wrapped
+in a kind of shawl, lay at his feet.
+
+"Is this the guidwife o' the hoose?" he asked, in a strong Scottish
+voice; "micht ye be Gordon's wife?"
+
+I acknowledged that I was, my tone indicating that I wouldn't mind
+knowing who he was.
+
+"I'm his faither," he said simply; "this'll be a graun' surprise to
+Gordon.  Is he ben the hoose?" indicating the dining-room by a nod of
+his head.
+
+"Yes," I said--"I'll call him out," my eyes fixed in a kind of
+fascination on the face and form before me.  This was a new type to me;
+unfamiliar enough, but decidedly picturesque withal.
+
+"I wunner will he ken me?" the old man said, a twinkle in his eye.
+"It's mony a lang day sin' he gaed awa'.  But he'll mebbe be busy?  Is
+there some o' his congregation wi' him?" for he heard the sound of
+voices.
+
+"Oh, no," I said, "he can come all right--we're just having dinner."
+
+"Mercy on us!" cried the stranger, "but ye're late wi' yir dinner; ha'e
+ye no' had onythin' sin' breakfast?"
+
+I smiled, turning towards the door to call my husband.  But he had
+evidently heard our voices, or something else had prompted him to come
+out, for he was already on his way to the kitchen.  I stood silent, and
+his eyes turned upon the stranger.  They rested there, it seemed to me,
+a good half minute before a sound escaped his lips.  Then with a loud
+cry he leaped forward, holding out his arms.  The hunger on the older
+face was pitiful to see.  Sometimes clasping Gordon tight to his bosom,
+sometimes holding him back a little to look upon his face, the father
+heart seemed unable to drink its fill.
+
+"Where did you come from, father?" Gordon asked, when speech at length
+returned.
+
+"I cam' frae Scotland--where else?" his father answered, "richt frae
+the hills.  An' I didna' let ye ken--I thocht 'twad be a bonnie
+surprise to ye.  I landed at Montreal last nicht, an' then I cam' richt
+on.  Whaur's the bairns?"
+
+"They're inside," said Gordon; "you'll see them in a minute."  Then
+followed a few minutes of swift questioning and answering.  "But come
+on in with us now," Gordon suddenly broke in, taking his father's arm
+as he spoke, "come, till I introduce you to my friends--come, Helen."
+
+I slipped behind the older man; and then, in Indian file, Gordon
+leading, we returned to our wondering guests.  A fine procession, too,
+we must have made; Gordon in his spotless evening dress, I in my very
+finest--and between us, tall and stooped, his white locks shaking as he
+walked, his eagle eye fixing itself half defiantly and half appealingly
+upon the upturned faces, stood Gordon's father in his homespun, the
+Scotch shawl still about his shoulders, the huge safety-pin that held
+it gleaming in the brilliant light.
+
+Gordon introduced him to every guest: "My father," he said to each, and
+no one could fail to see the radiance on his face.  Then the old man
+was given a seat at Gordon's right, the arrears of dinner were brought
+quickly in, and in a moment our new visitor was the centre of
+attraction.  Before taking his seat he stooped and kissed both the
+children, looking at them earnestly, then at their father, "The
+laddie's like yir mither, Gordon," he said, his voice trembling a
+little; "aye, he's got Elsie's mouth," wherewith he kissed him again,
+the lad looking up in wonder.  "The wee lassie favours yirsel', Mrs.
+Laird."
+
+"My name's Helen," I said quietly.
+
+The strong face glowed with pleasure; and I could see what joy my
+amendment had given Gordon.  "The wee girl has yir ain bonnie face,
+Helen," he corrected, hesitating a little before he spoke my name.
+
+It's wonderful what homing instincts children have!  For a few minutes
+later little Dorothy, usually so shy, slipped out of her chair and
+stole over beside her grandfather, looking wistfully up into his face.
+He took her on his knee, stroking her head with beautiful tenderness.
+
+His plate of soup was now before him, but still Grandfather Laird did
+not begin.  Finally, in some perplexity, he turned to Gordon.  "I'll
+tak' a wee drappie speerits, Gordon, if you please; I maistly tak's
+juist what ye'd notice afore supper--forbye, I'm tired."
+
+Gordon flushed, hesitating.  "We haven't such a thing about the house,
+father--we really never keep it," he began in some embarrassment.  "It
+isn't much of a custom out here, father."
+
+The old man sighed as he took up the snow-white napkin beside his
+plate, pushing it a little farther away lest it should get soiled.
+"I'm dootin' this country's no' juist what it's thocht to be.  The
+first mon I clappit my eye on in Montreal, he was a beggar, wi' a
+cup--an' I thocht everybody had plenty siller in Canady.  An' noo it
+seems ye ha'ena' a drappie aboot the hoose.  Weel, it's nae matter; I
+can dae wantin' it.  But I'll no' begin wi'oot the blessin'," he added
+gravely.  "Wull ye say it, Gordon?" nodding to his reverend son.
+
+"No, father--you say it yourself," replied Gordon, bowing his head, in
+which he was speedily followed by all of us.
+
+Then the old man, his hands outstretched, began a prayer of prodigious
+length.  Adoration, confession, thanksgiving followed in regular order,
+the whole enriched with many a Scriptural quotation.  I could not see
+the faces of our guests, but I knew right well how mystified they must
+be.
+
+A little shy at first, dispensing diffident glances around the company
+as they tried to engage him in conversation, the patriarch soon began
+to feel with what cordiality we all regarded him.  Wherewith he grew
+more and more communicative, this being evidently the occasion of his
+life; besides, and naturally enough, his heart was full to overflowing.
+
+"It's hard to tak' it in, laddie," he said once or twice, laying down
+his knife and fork and turning full round to gaze at Gordon; "to think
+we're baith in Ameriky, and me in yir ain hoose--an' you sittin' wi'
+yin o' thae claw-hammer jackets on ye, like the gentry wear.  It seems
+but the ither day ye were a wee bare-leggit laddie, helpin' yir faither
+mind the sheep.  Ye was as gleg as a collie dog.  I didna' think then,
+laddie, ye'd ever wag yir heid in a pulpit--but the ways o' Providence
+is wunnerfu'," as the honest eyes shone with pride and joy.
+
+I saw one of our minor guests titter a little at this.  She looked at
+Gordon rather as if she were sorry for him; fancied, no doubt, that he
+would be in sore straits of embarrassment to have his peasant father
+thus presented.  But I never was prouder of my husband than I was that
+night.  I actually felt my eyes grow dim more than once as I remarked
+the deference with which Gordon treated his father, so different though
+he was from what anybody would have expected.  He seemed to delight to
+honour him; and while I suppose it was only natural for him to notice
+how far from cultured he was--reckoning from our standards--yet I know
+he reverenced him in his inmost heart for the unaffected goodness that
+none could fail to recognize.
+
+Somebody, taking advantage of a momentary pause, asked the old man
+about his voyage.
+
+"Oh," he began enthusiastically, and I knew by his tone that he was
+off; "oh, we had a graun' time a'thegither.  I cam' i' the second
+cabin, nae doot," he went on without a particle of confusion, "for it
+didna' cost as muckle as the ither way; but there was a graun' lot o'
+passengers.  We didna' ha'e ower muckle to eat, nae doot--but they gied
+us porridge morn an' nicht, sae we was fine.  An' there was twa
+ministers wi' us," he went on, warming to his theme, "an' they preachit
+till us on the Sabbath day.  It's wunnerfu', the difference there is in
+ministers.  Yin o' them preachit in the mornin', an' the ither at
+nicht; the yin i' the mornin' was a puir feckless body; his sermon was
+a' aboot flowers, an' birds--an' the rainbow," this last coming out
+contemptuously; "he said a' thae things brocht us nearer God--did ye
+ever hear sic' haverin'?  An' he said they a' taught us aboot th'
+Almichty--an' them as loved them wud be saved!  I thocht mysel' wae, to
+ha'e to sit an' listen till him.  But the ither mon--wha preachit till
+us at nicht--he had the root o' the matter in him, I tell ye.  He
+preachit aboot sinners bein' turned intil hell--I ha'e the heids and
+pertikklers," he suddenly exclaimed, diving into a pocket for the same.
+"Here's his pints; first, naebody kens God wha doesna' ken the
+doctrines; second, thae wha doesna' ken will be lost," the gray beard
+shaking solemnly as he rolled out the truth; "third, them wha's lost is
+lost to a' eternity.  Oh, it was a graun' discoorse, I'm tellin' ye.
+It was unco' refreshing after the baby broth we got i' the mornin'.  I
+pit tuppence in the plate--but I didna' gie a farthin' in the mornin'.
+Are thae folk a' Presbyterians, Gordon?" he concluded by enquiring,
+nodding towards the assembled visitors.
+
+"Mostly all, father," was Gordon's answer; "in fact, I believe they all
+are."
+
+"Div ye teach them the Catechism, when ye're visitin'?" the old man
+pursued.
+
+"Not very much, I'm afraid," answered Gordon, laughing; "you won't find
+things just the same here, father, as they are in old Scotland--not in
+that line, at least."
+
+The old man's face clouded.  "Thae things shouldna' change," he said
+solemnly; "sin doesna' change--and the truth o' God's aye the same, my
+son," as he looked down at the table.  "I'm dootin' they're ower
+anxious aboot makin' money.  They tell me maist everybody's rich in
+Canady--but I saw twa beggars in Montreal," he recalled a little
+ruefully.  Then suddenly:
+
+"I ha'e a wee pickle siller wi' me mysel', Gordon," the Scotch instinct
+showing in his voice; "only it's nae sae little!"
+
+At this juncture my husband made heroic efforts to change the subject;
+but the old Scotchman was as intense about this as about graver
+matters.  "Aye, I ha'e upwards o' a hunnerd pounds," he said
+impressively, glancing shyly at the company; "ye mind yir mither's Aunt
+Kirsty?--or mebbe ye never saw her?  Weel, onyway, she died.  An' she
+was lang aboot it, I tell ye, for she was ninety-four.  Sae it was
+better for her to gang--better for us baith--an' she willed her wee bit
+belongings tae me--an' I sold them afore I left.  An' yir faither was
+the prood mon at the funeral, Gordon--I was the chief mourner," he
+explained impressively; "I was the only yin there that was related to
+the corpse--and I walked ahint the bearers till the graveyard.  A' the
+folk said I carried mysel' like a minister; the undertaker, he was an
+awfu' solemn mon--but I was solemner nor him; an' I kenned a' the time,
+mind ye, that I was the heir.  That's hoo I got the siller to pay my
+way to Canady.  But I ha'e a hunnerd pounds left, Gordon--an' I'm
+gaein' to invest it, after I look aboot a wee bit.  Investments is
+awfu' profitable here, they tell me.  It'll mak' a cozy pickle o'
+siller for me, wull it no', Gordon?"
+
+"Don't count too much on it, father," Gordon answered; "money isn't
+just as universal here as you old-country people think."  But the old
+man seemed reluctant to be convinced of this.
+
+A little later in the evening we had some music.  Most of the songs, I
+fear, were of the rather æsthetic type; and I fancied they appealed but
+little to our venerable friend.  He sat quietly in a corner of the
+parlour, as if lost in thought.  Every now and then his eyes would rove
+to Gordon's face, glowing with pride and affection.  As for me, I knew
+not when I had been so fascinated.  I simply sat and watched him,
+hardly knowing just what it was that held me so.  Partly the
+picturesqueness of this rugged type, I suppose, and partly a dawning
+recognition of the sterling worth behind the stern exterior;
+genuineness was written all over him.  Then I think I was beginning to
+love him for my husband's sake--I remember how the thought flashed on
+me that I never would have had Gordon but for him.
+
+Suddenly, availing himself of a temporary lull, the old man cleared his
+throat: "I'll gie ye a sang mysel'," he offered; "nane o' yir
+highfalutin kind--but a guid auld yin o' Bobbie Burns.  It minds me o'
+yir mither, Gordon," as he cleared his throat again with mighty din,
+preparatory to performance.
+
+"I'll try and play for you if you tell me what it is, Mr. Laird,"
+volunteered one of the ladies, moving towards the piano.  I had seen
+grandfather eyeing her askance a little while before; indeed, I myself
+thought her evening dress was rather overdone about the
+shoulders--underdone, perhaps, would be a better word.
+
+"No, no," replied the old man, with a disdainful wave of his hand, "yon
+clatter wud only throw me aff the tune.  I'll sing the way the Almichty
+meant," with which he broke into a strong, clear baritone that would
+really have commanded attention in any company.  More inspiring still,
+the whole soul of the man seemed to fuse with the touching words:
+
+  "My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream;
+  Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream."
+
+The applause that greeted the performance seemed to please the old man
+well.  From many standpoints this was evidently the night of his life,
+and soon his enthusiasm knew no bounds.  Not more than half an hour
+after, this first ovation still lingering gratefully in the performer's
+mind, one or two of the guests suggested that he favour us with another
+Scotch song, a proposal that soon grew into a general demand.
+
+"I canna'," declined the old man, "I canna' juist the noo.  But I'll
+tell ye what I'll dae wi' ye.  I'll gie ye the Hielan' fling--that's
+fair graun', an' ye'll no' hae it in Canady.  Gordon, gie me the
+bootjack, like a guid laddie--my shoon's ower heavy for
+dancin'--they're the lang-toppit kind."
+
+"We've nothing of the sort, father," Gordon explained reluctantly.
+
+"Ah, weel," he answered cheerfully, "ye'll dae fine yirsel'.  Staun'
+aroon' wi' yir back till me--and let yon mon pit his back till ye,"
+indicating an immaculate professor of burly form; who, apprehending,
+presented himself for Gordon's grasp, the latter in turn taking the
+already extended foot between his legs and gripping the boot tightly
+with his hands.  Gordon's sire then lifted up the free foot upon his
+son, pushing mightily, and making a noise the while such as I have
+heard men employ when raising telegraph poles.  A moment later Gordon
+and the professor were in a heap on the floor, a long boot with a red
+top between them.  The second similarly removed, the old man moved
+solemnly out to the middle of the floor, called for a couple of walking
+sticks, laid them crosswise; then broke into the most fantastic dance,
+leaping to and fro above the imaginary swords, sometimes crouching low,
+sometimes springing high in air, sometimes whirling like a Dervish with
+outflowing arms, the whole enriched by an occasional savage yell that
+was first the terror, afterwards the delight, of one or two of the
+ladies.  But all were entranced, and none more so than the performer
+himself.
+
+Shortly after the excitement had subsided the guests began to make
+their farewells.  But this struck the venerable Scotchman as quite
+irregular.  "Hoots!" he cried, when one or two had proffered me their
+hands, "ye canna' gang till we've had worship; Gordon wadna' like it.
+Wha ever heard tell o' freens leavin' the manse wi'oot a word o'
+prayer?  Gordon, tak' the Buik"; and his son, an amused smile playing
+about his lips, proceeded promptly to do as he was told.
+
+"Are ye no' gaein' to sing?" the old man suddenly broke out, for Gordon
+was just starting to read.
+
+"We don't usually, father; it's not customary here," was the answer.
+
+"It's a sair custom," rejoined his father, "neglectin' to sing the
+praise o' Almichty God.  But, onyway, we'll ha'e a psalm--I'll raise
+the tune mysel'," which purpose he carried into effect as soon as a
+selection had been made.  "We'll tak' the eighty-ninth," he said
+presently; and as he launched the mighty strain I recognized the very
+words that had given me my first introduction to the psalms, that
+far-gone night in uncle's house:
+
+  "Oh, greatly blessed the people are
+  The joyful sound that know,"
+
+he began, singing onward to the end.  Gordon and I alone could join
+with him, but our leader seemed not to care.  His whole heart and mind
+were absorbed in the great song of his fatherland, and he sang it as
+only an exile can.  Face and voice and soul all seemed to bear witness
+to the truth of the noble verse which brought the psalm to an end.  He
+looked like one of the old battling Covenanters themselves, his eyes
+closed, his head thrown back, one hand gently keeping time as he rolled
+out the crowning stanza:
+
+  "For God is our defense and He
+    To us doth safety bring;
+  The Holy One of Israel
+    Is our Almighty King."
+
+Silence fell.  Then Gordon moved over under the light and began to read
+the Scriptures.  The passage he chose was that sublime chapter from
+Isaiah; and there were few could interpret through the voice as Gordon
+could.  The old man sat, his eyes shaded by his hand, listening
+reverently.  By and by Gordon came to the words: "My servant shall deal
+prudently ... he shall be exalted and extolled ... his visage was so
+marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men."
+
+"Expound yon," came as a sudden interruption.
+
+Gordon looked up from the book.  "What's that, father?  Do what?"
+
+"Expound the Word," his father repeated solemnly; "the minister should
+aye expound the passage.  Tell the folk wha the prophet means."
+
+Gordon turned a puzzled look on the page.
+
+"Yon aboot the servant," his father explained; "the Suffering Servant,
+ye ken--Him wha's face was marred wi' cruel men.  Ye ken wha the
+prophet's referrin' to, my son?"
+
+Gordon understood.  "I see what you mean," he answered slowly; "but I
+don't know that I'm quite clear about that myself.  The best
+scholarship seems in doubt as to whether----"
+
+But the old man was all on fire now.  "I dinna' ken naethin' aboot yir
+scholars," he broke in vehemently, "an' I dinna' care.  But yon bit
+refers to the Man o' Sorrows--ye ken that fine, div ye no'?--it's
+Christ the prophet means--an' Him sufferin' for sin.  Gordon, expound
+the Word," and there was a stern grandeur about the pose and the voice
+of this champion of the truth that would have done credit to the
+ancient prophet himself.
+
+"I cannot," said Gordon, his lips quite white; "not as you understand
+it, father--it isn't clear to me."
+
+"Then close the Buik," said the old man sternly; "if it's no' the
+savour of life unto life, it'll be the savour o' death unto death."
+
+And Gordon did.  "You'll lead us in prayer, father," he said, his voice
+so low we could hardly hear.
+
+His father seemed to hesitate a moment, looking timidly around upon the
+strangers.  Then he slowly sank on his knees beside the chair, one hand
+resting on Dorothy's golden curls; and in a moment the Presence seemed
+about us.  It was a wonderful prayer, and came as if out-breathed
+beneath the very shadow of the Cross.
+
+Our guests took their leave in silence.  After the children were tucked
+away I waited long up-stairs for Gordon; but I fell asleep at last, the
+sound of earnest voices still floating upward from the study.  I knew
+it was a collision of the old school and the new--and I prayed on the
+father's side.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_"LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG"_
+
+There could be but one end to this.  Whether Gordon was right or wrong,
+he was not at one with the standards of his church.  I really believe,
+although I shrink from saying it, that his idea of _saving_ men came
+more and more to be confused with the process of simply _helping_ them.
+This sprang partly, of course, from his nobility of nature, from his
+large and loving heart--but it was wrong.  Gordon, I think, believed in
+relieving men, then reforming them, both of which were to spell
+regeneration.  And then, besides, he seemed to have adopted some theory
+about law, and the laws of nature--he knew more about evolution than
+any other man since Darwin--that had turned the once sweet luxury of
+prayer, real prayer, into nothing more than a sort of religious
+exercise.  I don't believe he thought prayers that actually asked for
+things were of any use at all.
+
+I suppose, too, although I never could find out much about this, that
+Gordon didn't just regard the Scriptures in the same way his brother
+ministers did; yet I knew he reverenced the Bible and simply lived
+among its teachings.
+
+But there could, as I have said, be only one end to all of this--so
+far, I mean, as Gordon's relation to St. Andrew's was concerned.  I
+felt from the beginning that it would be but a matter of time till he
+must forsake the pulpit he loved so well.  There were two influences
+that contributed powerfully to this: the one was Gordon's honour--the
+other, Gordon's father.  My husband had a fastidious conscience--and a
+faithful sire.
+
+Grandfather had been with us long--I cannot say exactly how
+long--before matters actually came to a crisis.  But I think he felt
+from the beginning, with the keen instinct of his kind, that Gordon's
+official ministry was at an end.  One night, sitting in an adjoining
+room, I overheard the most of a long conversation between the father
+and the son.  The burden of it did not greatly surprise me; grandfather
+had given me his mind on the matter before, or implied it anyhow, and
+more than once.  But I knew that night that the crisis was at hand.
+
+"Ye canna' dae onythin' else," the old man repeated once or twice;
+"when a minister gi'es up the fundamentals, it's no' richt for him to
+keep his kirk.  A preacher wi'oot a gospel!--he's a sair objec'," the
+Scotch voice concluded pitifully.
+
+I could catch the tone of almost bitter remonstrance in Gordon's
+answer.  "Without a gospel, father!" he cried reproachfully; "surely
+you don't accuse me of that--surely you're going too far."
+
+"Ye dinna' believe Christ died for sinners," the older man said
+sternly; "an' ony minister wha doesna' believe that--he's wi'oot a
+gospel, my son."
+
+"You don't understand me, father," Gordon remonstrated earnestly; "you
+state the thing too severely--perhaps I don't just believe it in the
+way you do, but----"
+
+"There's only the yin way to believe yon," interrupted his father; "you
+an' me's the same kind o' sinners, my son--an' we need the same kind o'
+a Saviour.  Forbye, ye think we're a' divine, I'm dootin'; that's what
+they say aboot ye, onyway--an' I'm thinkin' I've gathered it from yir
+sermons mair nor once."
+
+"Not exactly, father," I heard Gordon answer.  "What I do teach is,
+that every man has the divine within him; and if we but appeal----"
+
+"I dinna' ken what ye've got inside o' ye," broke in the champion of
+truth, "but I'm sick an' tired o' all inside o' _me_--naethin' but sin
+an' misery--naethin' but filthy rags," he added, careless of the
+unseemly metaphor.  "An' there's mair--ye dinna' believe there's ony
+use in prayer; nae guid ava', forbye juist ha'ein' fellowship wi' God.
+An' ye dinna' believe there's ony use in prayin' for the things we
+want--ye dinna' think it maks ony difference; ye're feart o' the laws
+of natur'--ye think God's a servant in His ain hoose, like as if He
+couldna' dae onythin' He wants to dae."
+
+"But I do believe in prayer, father--of course I do.  Perhaps I don't
+just believe that it alters or affects the outward course of things;
+but at the same time----"
+
+"Then ye maun settle it wi' the Word of God," the old man answered
+solemnly; "it aye bids us to ask for what we want; an' it tells us
+God's oor Heavenly Faither--an' what for wud He no' dae things for us,
+Him, wi' all power in His hands.  Oh, my son, my son, ye'll change yir
+mind some day, I'm dootin', when yir sair heart's callin' oot for the
+love o' the livin' God."
+
+And thus the sorrowful dialogue made its way.
+
+I think it was the very next day Gordon told me he had resigned St.
+Andrew's.  He told me his reason, too; which I knew already.  My heart
+leaped towards the children, I remember, but I scarce knew why;
+tenderly, passionately, pityingly, my heart went out to my children, to
+whom I knew it would mean the most.
+
+"Where will we go to live?" was one of the first questions I asked.
+For I did not seek, then, to turn Gordon from his purpose.  I knew too
+well how impossible that would be; besides, I felt no honourable course
+was open to him but the one he had already chosen.
+
+Gordon's face was very grave as he began to tell me of the only opening
+he saw before him.
+
+"But you'll get another call, Gordon--and another church, won't you?" I
+asked, dimly fearing.
+
+"No, no other call--and no other church," he answered firmly; "at
+least, no regular church, Helen;" with which he explained to me how the
+very reasons that prompted him to renounce St. Andrew's must hold him
+back from any similar position.  "But I'll have a field of work just
+the same--of usefulness, too, please God," he added, in the lowest
+voice.  "I can labour there without being responsible to any one but
+Him."
+
+Then he told me all about the plan he had in view.  He would take the
+little mission in Swan Hollow; this was the sunken part of the city in
+which he had so long carried on the work that had received so much of
+his care and love--the same to which Jennie McMillan had belonged, to
+whom I owed the happiness of all the years between.
+
+"We've got a little church there," he said, a note of pride mingling
+with the sadness of his voice, "and it doesn't belong to anybody but
+ourselves.  The people built it--and I helped them.  It's just possible
+the Presbytery may try to interfere with me--but I don't think so.
+That's where I'm going to preach now, Helen; and I'll preach the truth
+as I believe it."
+
+"But, Gordon," I remonstrated, "won't it be the same truth that you've
+preached in St. Andrew's?"
+
+He did not answer immediately.  And his face was clouded when his words
+came at length.  "It won't be the same as St. Andrew's expects to
+hear--and wants to hear," he said; "they demand the old orthodox truths
+in the old orthodox way--and then they're through with them," he added
+a little bitterly; "till the next Sunday, at least."
+
+"But aren't those the same truths your father believes?" I pressed,
+feeling the strength of my reply.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "but my father believes them in his inmost
+heart--and he lives them."
+
+"And don't you believe them in your inmost heart, Gordon?" I cried
+eagerly--"the way your father does?"
+
+"No," he answered gravely, after a long pause, his face very white;
+"no, I don't believe them as my father does."
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I pleaded with sudden entreaty, "come back--come back, my
+darling.  You're drifting; oh, Gordon, you're drifting away from
+God--and me," for my soul's loneliness was about me like a mist.
+
+"Don't," he said huskily, holding out his arms to me, "for God's sake
+don't make it any harder for me.  No man can drift far if he tries to
+do good in his Master's name--and I intend, I honestly purpose, to give
+my life to those poor people at the mission.  If any man will do His
+will, we're told, he shall know the doctrine.  I'm going to try to do
+His will, Helen--and I want you close beside me, together, doing our
+life-work hand in hand.  Then we can't be anything but happy, my
+darling," and his words rang with the note of life and courage.
+
+I loved the people of the mission; and I loved the work.  But the
+import of it all rose before me for a moment like a sullen cloud; the
+squalor of the homes; the ignorance of the people, loving and grateful
+though they were; the poverty on every hand; the obscurity of the
+position that must be ours; the pitiful support that we could hope to
+receive.  And our cozy manse seemed to grow and dance before my eyes,
+clothed suddenly with palatial beauty.  I could see little Dorothy, the
+big sunbonnet shading the dimpled face, as she picked dandelions on the
+lawn; and Harold, the treasure of my heart, as he swung into the hall
+and flung his school-bag on the table, calling aloud the while for
+mother.  It is humiliating to write it down; but I think the question
+of our living, too, of simple bread and butter, actually presented
+itself to my saddened and bewildered mind.
+
+I suppose it was weak and selfish of me--though I cared not for
+myself--when I flung myself into Gordon's arms and besought him as I
+did.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I pleaded amid my tears; "don't, dearest, for the
+children's sakes.  It isn't too late yet, Gordon--have you thought of
+what this means?--we'll likely have to take Harold out of school."
+
+He caressed me, trying to soothe me as he might a child.  "I know what
+it means, Helen," he answered; "I've thought of all that.  It breaks my
+heart to think of what it will bring to you--but I am helpless, dear,
+I'm helpless."
+
+"Not me," I sobbed, "not me, Gordon; I'd go with you to the depths of
+Africa.  But the children, Gordon--think of them.  We're old," I
+cried--and I really believed it--"we're old, and our life is nearly
+done; but Harold and Dorothy are so young, and theirs is all before
+them.  And don't--oh, Gordon, don't--for our children's sakes."
+
+"What can I do, my child?" he murmured.  "What else can I do?"
+
+"Why, Gordon--do what I do.  Oh, Gordon, all you need to do is to
+believe those things--the things I do, and the things your father
+does--and preach them, like you used to at the first.  And then we
+won't need to go away at all.  I believe the people really love you
+more now than they did years ago--and they'll keep on loving you--and
+then we won't have to, have to give up all this," I concluded, my
+tear-dim eyes looking wistfully up into his tired face.
+
+He shook his head.  "I must follow what light I have," he said.
+
+"But, Gordon," I went on, still hoping against hope, "I'm sure it would
+come all right.  We'll study those things out together, dear--and I'll
+help you.  I've learned a lot about them, ever since that night--that
+night, you remember, when Jennie died.  And I'll try and explain
+everything," I pleaded pitifully, the pathos of it all coming over me
+as I looked up at the strong and intellectual face, "and we'll both go
+on together--in the old paths--and I'll try so hard to help you, dear.
+Then we won't have to go away at all--or give up our house--and it's
+all so dark ahead of us, for the children, I mean."
+
+"I can't sell my soul for bread, Helen," he answered solemnly; "and I
+know as well as you what it all means.  My father's heart is nearly
+broken now."
+
+"And, Gordon," I whispered, still pressing my poor plea, "there's
+another thing we'll do," as I drew his face down beside my lips.
+
+"What, dearest?"
+
+"We'll--we'll pray together, Gordon; every day," I faltered, "every
+day, that God will make us believe the right things.  And He will--I
+know He will."
+
+"I've prayed that for long," he murmured low.  "Oh, my darling, I love
+you so," and his lips pressed themselves to mine with a reverence and a
+passion I had never felt before.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Let me write it down, for the comfort of every troubled heart, that the
+holiest hours in all life's retrospect are those that are clothed in
+sorrow.  The years have fled; yet the years are with me still.  And
+when one sits in the gloaming (as I sit now) and looks back at all the
+distant days, the lure that casts its spell upon the heart comes not
+from the radiant hour of mirth or ecstasy; nor from the period of glad
+prosperity; nor from the season of echoing mirth and laughter.  Not
+there does Memory ask leave to linger.  But it hovers long, in sweet
+and heartful reverie, about some hour of tender grief, some season of
+blessed pain--blessed always, tender evermore, because it has been
+glorified by love, robbed of all its bitterness by the loyalty of some
+dear heart that came closer and closer to your own amid the darkness.
+
+The home of early married life is the heart's earthly home forever.  I
+knew that now; and memory bathes the soul in tears as I recall our last
+night beneath the roof of that St. Andrew's manse.  Everything was
+packed and ready.  The new house, the tiny, shabby house that was next
+day to become our home, was waiting for our advent.  The rude but
+loving hands of some of the helpers at the mission had joined with ours
+to make it ready.  And for our living there, they were providing us
+with a little salary; pitifully small--but our children would have
+clothes and bread.
+
+My heart was like to break; but we spent that last evening in
+unconquerable brightness.  I know I was no less cheerful than
+Gordon--and ever and anon I wondered if his heart were as sad as mine.
+The most pitiful feature of it all was Dorothy's unconscious
+glee--moving was such great fun, she thought.  Harold was old enough to
+catch the contagion of our pain--for pain will show through the best
+veneer that courage can provide.
+
+Both the children, and their grandfather too, were in bed and sound
+asleep when Gordon and I went up-stairs together about ten o'clock.  We
+went into the children's room, for they were still unparted, the little
+bed nestling close to the big one; and we stood long above the
+slumbering forms, our eyes swimming as we looked.
+
+"I wonder if it's really so," I heard Gordon murmur.
+
+"What, darling?" I said.
+
+"That God pities us--like we pity them," the sentence finished in a
+broken voice.  "It solves all life's problems--if that's really so."
+
+I could make no answer.  But I bowed and kissed Harold's lovely brow;
+then Dorothy's.
+
+"Come with me, Gordon," I said gently, after we had stood a while in
+silence, starting to move across the hall.
+
+He followed me into our own room.  "This is harder than all the rest,"
+I said brokenly; "this is the dearest and sacredest room in the world
+to me.  Oh, Gordon," and I was sobbing now, "surely they'll let
+me--whoever comes here after us--surely they'll let me come sometimes
+and see it, won't they, Gordon?"
+
+His arms were so strong, his voice so tender.  "Why, dearest, why?
+What makes this room so sacred to you?"
+
+"Oh, don't you know?" and the words could hardly come for sobbing;
+"this is where they were born, Gordon--where they both were born.  It
+was right there I lay when I first saw Harold's face.  Oh, Gordon, I
+can't--I don't know how to give it up."
+
+His eyes were full of pity and his voice was quivering.  "Yes," he
+said, "yes, it's holy--but we have the children left, my darling," and
+he began to lead me gently from the room.  Nor did he stop till we were
+standing where we had stood before, looking down on the unconscious
+forms.
+
+"I'm going down to the study for a while," he said a little later; "I
+won't be long," as he began to descend the stairs, his footsteps
+echoing through the dismantled house.
+
+I went back to my room, weeping, and sat down upon one of the trunks
+that stood about.  Suddenly an impulse came to me--I think it must have
+been from heaven--and I sprang to my feet, burrowing eagerly towards
+the bottom of the trunk.
+
+Ten minutes later I stole down the stairs.  I was arrayed in my wedding
+gown.  The years may have chafed it some, but they had not availed
+against its beauty and its richness.  The pearl trimming--and those
+other radiant things that have no name--shone triumphant in the light.
+And I had about my neck, and on my bosom, some precious lace that I had
+removed long years before.  The hall was almost empty--little there but
+our piano, that had been dragged out and left close beside the door.
+There was a mirror, too, still undisturbed upon the wall; and I paused
+before it just as I had done that golden day in Baltimore when Gordon
+was waiting to take me as his own forever.  My eyes rested lovingly on
+the sweet and stainless vesture--it still fitted me like a glove, thank
+heaven--and then wandered to the face above.  Long, long I gazed into
+the answering eyes, the past lying deep within them like water in some
+amber spring.  The face was older, of course, and the signs of toil and
+care were on it; but the golden glow of love, I felt, clothed it with a
+peace--and a beauty too--which it never knew on that far-off wedding
+day.  Poverty and hardship, I knew, were waiting at the gate; obscurity
+and struggle were to be our portion.  But my husband was sitting in the
+room just beyond the door; my children--oh, the wealth and sweetness of
+the word!--my children's breathing I could almost hear; the years were
+past and gone, from whose hands I had received them all--and in that
+hour my wedding robes glistened with a holier light than time can cast,
+and the bridal bliss sprang like a fountain in my heart.
+
+"Why so long?" Gordon suddenly sang out; "come in."
+
+"I'm coming, dear," I said, and I felt the blitheness of my voice as it
+echoed through the hall.  Very softly I stepped in and stood before him
+as he sat beside the dying fire.
+
+His eyes devoured me with love; they roamed mostly about my
+dress--which was exactly what I wanted.  I think he glanced once or
+twice about the room, its denuded bareness contrasting strangely with
+the rich robe I wore.  Then he rose and took me into his arms--far,
+deep in--as into a mighty refuge.  "You never looked so sweet, my
+darling--the years haven't touched it," was all he said.  But he kissed
+my hair, my neck, my lips.
+
+It was nearly an hour later when we arose to go up-stairs, and I was
+still in all my glory as we moved out, Gordon's arm still about me,
+into the echoing hall.
+
+"Sing something," he suddenly requested as we passed the piano.  It
+stood in sullen silence, as if it knew this to be a move for the worse.
+
+My hands roved over the keys for a little; it was hard to know what
+would suit the hour.
+
+But some breath of other days was wafted in upon me; and I felt my
+heart leap beneath the wedding lace upon my bosom as the song gushed
+into my mind again.
+
+The light was dim, the house disrobed, the piano out of tune.  But I
+can still see the rapture in Gordon's face as mine turned up to meet it
+while the words came one by one:
+
+  "Still must you call me tender names
+    Still gently stroke my tresses;
+  Still shall my happy answering heart
+    Keep time to your caresses."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_WHEN JOY AND SORROW MEET_
+
+"No, I'm never going back again," and the stamp of determination was on
+Harold's face as he spoke the words; "I'm never going back to school
+any more."  He was gravely adjusting his books in the well-worn bag as
+he spoke, giving each one a final pat as if in last farewell.  "I've
+been there too long," as he looked up at his father and me.
+
+The room was small, the furniture shabby and worn now; for some years
+had passed since we came to live in the little house that still
+preserved to us an unbroken circle.  We were all seated around the
+table in the dining-room--which was our only living-room--and Gordon
+had been telling Dorothy some wonderful story of red Indians when
+Harold's avowal had suddenly transfixed us all.
+
+It is wonderful how a sudden wave of emotion gives prominence, in the
+memory, to everything connected with it.  I could draw, even now, as
+accurate a picture of all the surroundings as though the event were but
+of yesterday.  The room was small, as already described; but so was the
+house, for that matter.  Yet there was something sweet and lovely, to
+me at least, about this tiny room that night--for my loved ones were
+all within it.  I was sewing at the time, mending, of which there
+seemed to be no end; but every now and then my eyes would refresh
+themselves upon the little group.  Gordon was still, despite the years,
+by far the handsomest of them all.  The tokens of toil and care were
+not to be denied, but a deeper calm and sweetness could be seen upon
+the noble face as he bended over the golden locks of our little
+daughter.  And very winsome was little Dorothy, laughing up into her
+father's eyes, reading there, as children are not slow to do, the signs
+of a consuming love.  Grandfather Laird was dozing in the big armchair
+in the corner, his hand still resting on his shepherd's staff; dear old
+grandfather, whose race was nearly run, the strong Scottish face
+stamped more and more with the simple grandeur of his nature as he came
+nearer to the eternal verities on which his mind had dwelt so long.
+
+I think my heart had gone out increasingly to grandfather as the years
+went by.  Denied my own immediate circle in my girlhood's home, my
+affections had struck deep root amid all that Gordon loved.  Perhaps I
+ought to say here that Gordon more than once had wanted me to go South
+again--and he would even have accompanied me.  But I always felt it was
+too late, after my mother had entered into rest--besides, there always
+yawned before me the gulf that still lay between my uncle and my
+husband.
+
+In addition to all this, to tell the honest truth, I don't know how we
+could have devised ways and means, even if I had been willing to visit
+my dear Southland again.  For nobody will ever know the bitterness of
+the struggle that we entered upon with our departure from St. Andrew's.
+The pinching and paring and piteous penury that came with our change of
+lot lingers with me yet as a troubled dream.  Yet I want to say, in
+case this story should ever see the light and anybody recognize its
+hero, that I never heard a word of complaint from Gordon's lips.  If I
+loved him before I almost worshipped him now.  With utter abandonment
+of devotion he gave himself to the struggling and sinful people of the
+needy quarter in which we made our home and among whom we found our
+work.  All his buoyant vigour, his splendid intellect, his glorious
+heart, were given unreservedly to his lowly toil.
+
+And I think I can say, with all regard to modesty, that I honestly
+tried to help him.  His people grew as dear to me, I verily believe, as
+they were to him.  Of course, my work was largely in our humble home,
+which I tried to make as bright and comfortable for Gordon as I could.
+The children, too, filled my life with busy joy--but I gave every hour
+I could spare, and all the strength I could command, to help Gordon in
+his noble drudgery.
+
+I hardly know what I would have done, through all those trying days, if
+it had not been for grandfather.  For one thing, his influence over
+Harold, now in the perilous paths of youth, filled my heart with
+thankful gladness.  His devotion to his grandson became the passion of
+his life; he seemed unhappy if Harold was out of his sight, and the
+boy's future was his absorbing thought.
+
+Then, besides, grandfather's life was so full of Christian peace; and
+his faith, in spite of the awful disappointment that Gordon's course
+had brought him, remained true and tranquil through it all.  I really
+think he was the best Christian I ever knew.  And how he comforted me,
+no one will ever know till all such secrets be revealed.  For ours was
+a common sorrow.  Soon it became evident to us both that Gordon, nobly
+devoted though he was, was turning more and more from the old truths
+that his father held so dear.  Nor were they, I think, less precious to
+myself; the deeper the darkness grew, and the more Gordon seemed to
+turn from the truths that had blessed my life, the more my troubled
+heart seemed to find its refuge in the great realities of a Divine
+Saviour, and an atoning Lord, and a Heavenly Father who answers prayer;
+and I always found grandfather's sorrowing spirit seeking the same
+solace as my own.
+
+I see them all again as they sat that night about the table; the quick
+motion of Gordon's head is vivid to me now, as he turned from the
+clamorous Dorothy and gave all his attention to his son.
+
+"I've been at school too long," Harold repeated firmly, "and now I'm
+going to do something--to earn my own living."
+
+"What makes you say that, my son?" Gordon asked, the pallor on his face
+betraying his emotion.
+
+"Because I've found out all about it," Harold replied confidently;
+"surely you don't think I'm such a stupid as not to see all it has
+meant to you and mother--all the sacrifice, I mean--and all the
+struggle you've had to keep me going--and all the things you've had to
+give up.  I know how poor we are," he went on passionately, "and I
+should have stopped long ago, and tried to help instead of being a
+burden to you."  Then he quoted one or two of his proofs, which simple
+womanly pride forbids me to record; but they were true enough, and it
+nearly broke my heart to see the sadness on Gordon's face.  For there
+was almost nothing he could say, and his poor remonstrances were of no
+avail.
+
+"Look at mother," Harold broke out vehemently; "look at mother's dress.
+It's the same one she's had for years--and it's mended," he added in
+fiery sadness, "and it's the only one she has in the world except just
+one for Sundays--and it's shabby, too.  And that's all for me, for me
+and Dorothy--but especially for me--and I'm not going to stand it any
+longer.  Besides, I've got a place--and I'm going to begin on Monday.
+I'm going away to Carletonville.  But I'll be home for Christmas," the
+fiery tone melting into tenderness as he rose from his seat and came
+over beside me.
+
+For he had caught the expression of my face.  Ah me! there are few
+moments in a woman's life like to that which announces the outgoing of
+her child from her home, how humble soever that home may be, Especially
+if the outgoing one be her first-born son!  It was as if a knife had
+gone through my heart.
+
+"But, what are you going to do, my boy?--what kind of work, I mean?" I
+asked in a trembling voice, the garment I was mending falling unheeded
+to the floor.
+
+"It's a bank," he answered proudly; "Mr. Duncan got me in.  I didn't
+say anything to anybody till I got it settled.  But I wrote the
+application myself--and they said it was the best letter they ever got
+from an applicant," a slight flush of pride on the boyish face.  "And
+Mr. Duncan says there's other work I can get to do--at nights--and I'll
+be able to support myself from the start," his breath coming fast with
+growing excitement as he turned his eyes first on his father and then
+on me.
+
+"You shan't," I cried, with sudden fear, as it broke on me that he was
+actually going away.  Our poverty was as nothing then.  "Oh, Harold,
+you mustn't--I cannot let you go," and I clung to him as though he were
+going away that selfsame hour.
+
+Gordon seemed unable to speak, sitting still and staring at the boy.
+Harold's cheeks were glowing and his eyes were sparkling; his arm was
+still about me.
+
+Suddenly my husband found a voice, breaking out into a torrent of
+remonstrance.  Really, it was quite unlike him to grow so agitated--but
+Gordon's whole life was in his children.  "If your mother and I can
+stand it, there's no reason why you should object," he pleaded, after
+many other arguments had been pressed in vain.  But Harold was
+immovable; his word had been passed, he said, and he would not recede
+from it.
+
+"Let the laddie gang," came suddenly from grandfather's chair in the
+corner.  I think we had forgotten he was there.  "It's the auld way o'
+the world--the bairnies must leave the nest some time," he added, his
+own voice shaking.  "An' his faither's God wull ha'e him in His guid
+an' holy keeping--the Almichty'll find the path for him.  Come here, my
+laddie," and he held out his arms.  Harold came over, wondering; the
+patriarch laid his hands in blessing on his head, and then committed
+him to God in words of such beauty as I think I never heard before.
+
+But Gordon protested long and earnestly.  "Anything but the bank," he
+said at last; "I cannot bear, my son, to think of you in a bank."
+
+"That's what I think," I cried, eagerly seconding; "they make them work
+so hard--and it's all indoors--and Harold's not overly strong," I
+pleaded, careless of the splendid form that stood beside grandfather's
+chair.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," Gordon interrupted in his abrupt way;
+"it's not of that I'm thinking at all.  It's the peril of the thing, my
+son--the danger, the temptations--just to think of the money that
+passes through a lad's hands when he's put into a bank.  And that's how
+so many of them are ruined--for time and eternity," he added solemnly.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I cried in protest, "you don't mean stealing, Gordon,
+stealing money--you don't mean that?"
+
+"That's exactly what I mean," said Gordon, untrained to subterfuge.  "I
+mean the peril of handling so much money."
+
+Whereat I fell into a storm of dissent, half in excitement, half in
+anger, as though my son had been accused already.  I fear I spoke words
+harsh and unreasonable, but my defense must be that I was all unstrung
+with sudden grief and fear.  Till by and by I was as violent in my
+demand for his father's consent as I had been in denial of my own, so
+strange are the cross-currents that trouble a woman's heart.
+
+But we might as well have all been silent, so far as any effect on
+Harold was concerned.  He had promised and he was going--and that was
+the end of it.  So the outcome of the whole matter was a kind of tacit
+agreement, before we parted for the night, that Harold was to have his
+way.
+
+When Gordon and I were in our own room, the door tightly shut, I
+pleaded with him to accept a plan that my poor bewildered mind had
+conjured up.  "Let me write to uncle," was the burden of my cry; "if
+our boy is leaving us because we're not able to support him, uncle
+could change all that; he could at least undertake to complete his
+education--and I know he will, I know he will."
+
+But Gordon's face was like marble.  In the last appeal a Scotchman is
+always Scotch--and I knew Gordon was thinking of that last night when
+he had been all but turned from uncle's door.  "Not while we have a
+crust to eat or a hand to toil," he said, in a tone so low and resolute
+that I actually feared to press my argument with another word; "no
+child of mine shall be dependent on his father's enemy;" which language
+smote me to the heart--nor do I think Gordon would have uttered it in a
+calmer mood.
+
+Before we put out the light, his face still white and drawn, he took me
+by the hand and led me towards the bed.  We knelt and prayed
+together--but my heart was bleeding.  And anyhow--it is hard to write
+it down--Gordon and I didn't seem so close together now, when we
+prayed, as we once had been.  I had the phantom feeling that we prayed
+apart.  He had beckoned me, years before, in to faith's Holy Place
+where the Divine Saviour waited for us both; I had faltered in, groping
+for the way, bringing a broken and contrite heart--and I had found my
+husband gone.
+
+It was the deep dark before the dawn when I slipped noiselessly into
+Harold's room--and I prayed beside his bed.  I loved to hear him
+breathing; and I wondered if God could hear _me_--my soul, I mean, half
+panting in its loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_"THE VOICE OF RACHEL"_
+
+When I began this chapter it was with the purpose of telling about
+grandfather's home-going.  But not to his beloved Scotland, of whose
+heathery hills he seemed to think more fondly and speak more longingly
+as the years went by.  It never lost its charm for us, this loving talk
+of the old Scotch shepherd about the far-off hills and valleys of his
+native land; even I, who had never been near them at all, came to be
+quite familiar with those sunlit slopes, their glistening heather,
+their babbling springs, their bleating flocks that roamed from base to
+brow.  No, not to Bonnie Scotland--as he fondly called it--but to a
+fairer clime, did the weary shepherd turn his face at last.
+
+But before I come to this I must tell of something else; something I
+would to God might be left unrecorded, for my pen is aching while I
+write.  But this other--what I am about to tell--had its own part, I
+think, in starting dear old grandfather on the long journey from which
+he will return no more.  For it is about Harold, who was grandfather's
+idol, as I have already said.
+
+Our son had gone away, grief and hope mingling with the last farewell.
+That memory is with me yet.  Indeed, I never rise early now, around
+five or six, without the feeling that some one dear to me is going far
+away.  I remember the sweet calm of the early dawn, the first glad
+notes of the singing birds, careless of human tears, the sparkle of the
+dew upon the little lilac bush before the door, as we went past it with
+Harold's trunk.  What a hard time I had to press into Harold's hand the
+poor little dollar I had saved from our scanty means as my own special
+gift--how pathetic it was to see the care with which he tucked it away
+in a painfully capacious pocketbook that grandfather had given him; how
+lonely it looked in the infinite space around it!  And I remember how
+poor old grandfather noticed it, and how he bewailed himself that he
+had not kept till then the hundred pounds he had brought with him from
+Scotland.  But this, his only wealth, had been "invested," as he had
+told us over and over again for months after the investment had been
+made.  Poor grandfather! we had heard nothing for long of the
+speculation that had looked so rosy to him then.
+
+And I remember, most vividly of all, what a time I had trying to
+comfort Gordon when he came back from the station.  After all, perhaps
+I must admit that a father loves his son quite as much as his
+first-born girl.  And it seemed strange that I had to be the strong
+one, but so it was.  When evening came, and we had family prayers,
+Gordon's pleading didn't comfort me at all.  But I had learned long
+before this that the new view of prayer refuses to concede that
+anything can change "the course of nature"--I hate that phrase--and
+teaches that it is only communion, pious meditation, and not supposed
+to be used for asking for what you want.  So Gordon had gradually given
+up asking for particular things, though heaven knows there was enough
+to ask.  Higher critics are the highway robbers of the soul.
+
+Well, everything went along smoothly enough for nearly a year.  Harold
+wrote twice a week, and seemed delighted with his work.  He expected
+soon to be promoted, one of his last letters said; and Gordon told me
+that a general manager gets twenty thousand a year--that is, after he
+gets the position, of course.  I used to think Harold was having a
+pretty lively time--socially, I mean--and he seemed to spend a good
+deal on clothes.  But he did copying, and other things, out of hours,
+and made almost enough to pay his way.  And we knew he was asked out a
+great deal, as bank clerks always are--and that's enough to turn any
+young fellow's head.  Society seems to do its very best to ruin such
+youths as turn their footsteps towards a bank; Gordon said himself that
+most of these clerks do more credit to their tailor than their
+schoolmaster.  As for me, if I had fifty sons not one of them would
+ever go into that profession with my consent--unless he began as
+general manager, with twenty thousand a year.
+
+By and by Harold began to get interested in sports--mostly lacrosse, I
+think--and that was the portal to our Gethsemane.  I shall not dwell
+upon the sad and bitter story.  But one day a letter came from
+Carletonville; the envelope bore the bank's name, but the address was
+not in Harold's hand.
+
+"It's about his promotion, Gordon," I said exultantly; "it's about
+Harold--he's been raised at last.  You open it."
+
+Gordon was radiant.  "No, Helen," he said unselfishly; "he owes it more
+to you than me--open it yourself.  He gets his financial ability from
+his mother," and he leaned forward to hear me read the news.
+
+I opened it so carefully; for I meant to preserve it always--till he
+was general manager, at least.  My eye ran swiftly over the contents
+and I fell with a loud outcry into Gordon's arms.
+
+I scarcely need to tell the story further.  The letter was not
+unkind--I remember remarking that, in a numb, mechanical way, in the
+midst of all the agony.  There was even a little stern note of sympathy
+in it, as the authorities outlined the piteous tragedy.  I suppose they
+knew we had human hearts.  It was the old story; debt, then betting,
+then petty irregularities in the hope that the deficit would soon be
+overtaken.  Then a little more; then a false signature--I cannot write
+the other word; then more--and the man who wrote us used the term
+embezzlement.  That was when I fainted in Gordon's arms.
+
+All that night I lay awake, alone.  Gordon had left by the first train
+to go to Harold.  I pleaded with him to bring our boy home with him.
+And I shall remember to all eternity how white his lips were when he
+said he would--_if he could_.  I knew what he meant; and I fell to
+trembling so that I could hardly say good-bye.  Then I went to bed and
+lay all night staring wildly into the dark.  And that night, for the
+first time in all my married life, I cursed poverty--out loud I cursed
+it with bitter emphasis--the poverty that made us so helpless now.  For
+I fancied, poor thing, that all would be well if the money could only
+be replaced.  I cared nothing for the tokens of poverty that were all
+about me, the poor and ill-furnished house, the scanty wardrobe, the
+meagre larder--these were but trifles to me then.  But I thought
+bitterly of the people I knew in Hertford who had plenty of money, once
+friends of ours, but lost to us now; and I silently impeached the poor
+people of our mission, as if they were somehow responsible for it all.
+I blamed Gordon, too--it was all due to his wandering from the beaten
+path--and I breathed out threatenings and slaughter against every
+German theologian that ever lived.
+
+It was a couple of hours before the dawn when my heart suddenly fell to
+beating wildly--some one was gently trying the front door, the knob
+slowly moving back and forward.  I listened, trembling; a moment later
+all was still.  Then I heard steps moving round on the walk beneath my
+room; I rose and crept to the open window, finally summoning strength
+to call out a timid challenge.
+
+"Mother, it's me--it's Harold, mother," came a subdued voice from below.
+
+I almost fainted for very joy.  I was never so happy before in all my
+life; an intoxicating sense of gladness, rioting like a flood, rushed
+over me as I turned and flew down-stairs to the door.  A moment later
+my arms were about my son as I led him, sometimes laughing, sometimes
+crying, back to my room.  I remember how tight I closed the door behind
+us, as if we were to be shut in together forevermore.  And then he
+crept into bed beside me, just as he had done in the dear old days when
+he was a little fellow; and I lay with my cheek close to his, my arms
+about him, no word of reproach, even of enquiry coming from my lips.  A
+strange unreasoning joy it was that possessed me--I might have known it
+could not last--and I called him by all the old tender boyish names
+while my hands roamed among his hair, sometimes descending to trace the
+features of his face, just to make sure that he was there.  I remember
+how, more than once, there flitted before me a vision of the far-off
+days when he had lain a babe beside me, nourished at my breast--at
+which I held him closer than before, my bosom aching with its load of
+love.
+
+He told me all about it; about the tragedy; and I listened like one
+dead.  I know now what they feel who stand before the Great White
+Throne, awaiting the word of destiny.  Harold's voice grew lower as his
+speech went on, and as it grew nearer to the dawn.  He seemed to fear
+the return of morning.  And slowly, with ghostly outline, it was made
+clear to me that he could not linger--that he was not my own at all.
+They were likely in quest of him even now, cruel men, scornful of a
+mother's love; perhaps already hurrying towards his father's house.  My
+arms were strong, I knew, infinitely strong--and they closed about him
+again in a passion of possession.  Yet I knew how weak and powerless
+they would be if that other arm, the law's mighty arm, should be
+outstretched upon him.
+
+So I bade him go.  First with gentle entreaty, then with insistent
+urgency, then with vehemence of command, I thrust him from my crying
+heart.  I arose, groping for some garments that might help the disguise
+he would surely need--with feeble cunning I refused to light a
+lamp--searching for this and that to serve our piteous purpose.  With
+what difficulty, I remember, did I find one of Gordon's old hats,
+dusting it carefully, and changing its shape from one form to another
+to make it look more natural on Harold's head.
+
+Soon we were at the door.  The dawn was glimmering.  "Go, my darling,"
+I said hoarsely, "there will be few about when you catch the morning
+train.  Come to me once again--put your arms around me, tight--kiss me,
+my son."
+
+But he did not move, looking down shame-facedly at the ground.  Again I
+besought him to be gone.
+
+"How can I?" he said abruptly at last, the words like to choke him; "I
+have no money, mother."
+
+This smote me like a blow.  But suddenly and with a little cry of
+joy--such strange eddies are there in the stream of sorrow--I
+remembered a few dollars I had sorely saved for the purchase of the new
+gown I needed so.  I sprang back into the house and reappeared in a
+moment with the scanty savings--I caught the rumble of distant wheels
+and knew the world would be soon astir.  Harold's face fell as he
+glanced at the money I thrust so triumphantly into his hand; it was not
+enough--I might have known it could not be enough.
+
+We stood together, bowed with disappointment.  Suddenly the rumbling
+wheels came nearer, till, as they hove in sight around a corner, I saw
+it was the milkman's wagon.  A quick inspiration came to me as I bade
+Harold slip back into the house.  The milkman's ruddy face showed its
+surprise as his eyes fell on me, for he was accustomed to leave his
+wares at the back door and go upon his way.  I greeted him as calmly as
+I could; and then, not without shame, I boldly asked him if he could
+lend me a little money.  "A friend of mine is going away," I said, "on
+the morning train--and he doesn't happen to have quite enough."
+
+The honest swain, nothing doubting, fumbled in his pockets, finally
+producing a good deal more than my poor savings had amounted to.  I
+took the money from him, my heart beating wildly at the sudden
+deliverance.  Then I went in to Harold and put it in his hand.  It hurt
+me, beyond words to tell, to see the confusion and pain with which the
+poor lad took the money, though it was from his mother.  Then his eyes
+suddenly filled with tears.  "Can't I say good-bye to Dorothy?" he said
+brokenly; "I want to say good-bye to Dorothy."
+
+The tenderness of his tone almost overcame me.  I put my arm about him
+and we went up-stairs together, quickly, for the time was passing.  We
+could hear grandfather's heavy breathing as we passed his door; Harold
+looked in wistfully, but I shook my head.  Dorothy was sound asleep,
+her golden curls dishevelled on the pillow, her lips slightly parted, a
+much worn doll emerging from beneath one arm.  My eyes only glanced at
+her, then turned to Harold's face, silently filling as I saw the
+evidences of his grief.  He stood a moment above the bed, then stooped
+and kissed the rosy face; she stirred, smiling in her sleep, her hand
+unconsciously moving towards her doll.  He kissed her again,
+unwisely--and the blue eyes opened wide.
+
+"Harold," she murmured sleepily, "dear Harold--I knew you'd come
+home--I dreamed you were never going away any more."
+
+The boy's lips were quivering, and we turned softly towards the door.
+But Dorothy, still only half awake, uttered a plaintive protest.
+"Don't go away, Harold," she mumbled, "get into your bed, Harold--your
+own beds," one half-opened eye indicating an unused couch beside her.
+"Say your prayers and then come--kneel down there, Harold," drawing the
+battered doll away from the side of the bed.
+
+He looked at me.  I motioned; and we knelt together, Harold's hand
+close beside the vagrant curls.  His voice was faint and faltering:
+
+  "Now I lay me down to sleep,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
+  If I should die before I wake
+  I pray the Lord my soul to take."
+
+He paused, preparing to arise.  "Say the rest," Dorothy murmured, "say
+it all, Harold."
+
+Again he looked at me.  Then his face sank between his hands and once
+more the broken voice went on: "God bless father, and mother, and
+Dorothy--and bless Harold and make him a good boy, for Christ's sake.
+Amen."
+
+The little monitor seemed satisfied, slipping back again into the
+stream of slumber.  Harold and I went gently down the stairs.  I spoke
+no word but held him to my bosom, aching still, with such a fierce
+flame of longing as I had never known before.  I opened the door; even
+then I paused to adjust the hat, so large and serious looking, on his
+head.  He passed out, his face averted, and started running on his
+way--on, on, away from home, away from his mother's empty arms.
+
+I went back to the room where his sister lay.  Long I stood above the
+vacant bed, wondering bitterly why I had not gloried more in those old
+golden days when two dear tiny heads lay upon the pillows there.  A few
+minutes after I heard the whistling of a train; I sank beside the empty
+bed and tried to pray--but my lips, I know not why, could frame no
+words except the words of Harold's prayer.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_"COME, ETTRICK; YARROW, COME"_
+
+It was two long days before Gordon returned to me.  He knew the worst,
+of course, but had lingered at Carletonville in the hope that he might
+get some trace of Harold.  A telegram to me, and another from me to
+him, told enough to send him home at once.  Poor Dorothy's eyes looked
+wonderingly upon us as her father held me in his arms so long and so
+silently after he came in the door.  Grandfather turned his troubled
+face away, pretending to gaze out of the window.
+
+"You look so old, Gordon," I said unguardedly, as I drew back to look
+once more on the haggard face.
+
+"I _am_ old, my darling," was all his answer, as he drew me to him
+again.
+
+I forget what we talked about that evening--it was a dreadsome hour.
+And I actually feared for Gordon.  He seemed half crushed, and half
+defiant, sometimes breaking out into a flood of grief, sometimes
+sitting long in stony silence.  I felt guilty in the thought that I was
+more composed than he; once or twice I caught myself admitting that my
+faith was stronger than his--but I dismissed the comparison as
+pharisaical.  Yet that was my chief concern for my husband--I feared
+for the influence this sorrow would have on his secret life.  I knew
+then, oh! how well I knew, that only one anchor could hold amid a storm
+like this.  And the very ones who had taught me this were God and
+Gordon.
+
+The gloaming was just deepening into dark when I came back to the study
+after telling Dorothy good-night; grandfather's chair was close beside
+Gordon's, the white head visible through the gloom.
+
+"Noo's the time to use yir faith," the old man was saying softly;
+"naebody needs a licht till the mirk gathers roun' aboot them.  An'
+there's ae thing, there's ae thing, my son, ye maun aye keep sayin' to
+yirsel': the laddie's juist as dear to God as he is to you an'
+Helen--if ye love him, it's because God loves us a'," and the quivering
+voice fell on my harrowed heart like music from some steeple far aloft.
+"Aye," he went on as if to himself, "Harold canna' wanner ayont the
+Faither's care--an' we can aye follow him wi' prayer.
+
+"Rax Gordon the Buik, lassie," he suddenly said, after we had sat a
+while in silence.
+
+I did as I was bidden and Gordon received it without a word.  It seemed
+to me, though perhaps it was only fancy, as he held it a moment, then
+opened it slowly and began turning the pages over, that there was a
+reverent eagerness about it such as had long been wanting.  I wondered,
+fearfully, if this new ministry were already working its blessed way.
+And he passed Hosea by, though he had been reading for some time from
+that section of the Scriptures; he had some books on those old writers
+that he was delving into, and he always read at family worship from the
+parts he was studying for himself--there was so much of this that I had
+really grown weary of the prophets, shameful though it may be to
+confess it.  Gordon still turned the leaves, nor stopped till he came
+to the fourteenth of St. John: "Let not your heart be troubled," which
+he read with a trembling voice that interpreted it beyond all the power
+of German scholarship.  It was like a great anthem to my soul that
+night, and I think I gloried as much in Gordon's voice as in the
+wonderful words.
+
+When we knelt to pray I slipped over to Gordon's chair, and we bowed
+together, his hand tight clasped in mine.  I prayed for Gordon all the
+time we were bended thus, my heart full of a kind of thankful joy that
+mingled strangely with the passion of loss and loneliness already
+there.  The prayer was beautiful; and just before its close Gordon
+stopped, tried again, then faltered out with a kind of sob:
+
+"And, oh, God, give us back our son--bring him back to us, oh, Father
+of us all."  My heart leaped for joy, like one whose long night was
+almost past.
+
+No word was spoken as grandfather and I slipped out a few minutes
+later; I went with him to his room, to see that everything was ready.
+"The guid Shepherd'll bring the wannerin' lamb hame yet," he said as I
+turned to go, the strong features struggling with emotion; "He'll bring
+them baith back--back till Himsel'--did ye no' tak' notice o' Gordon's
+prayer?  He's comin' hame, thank God, he's comin' hame," and the old
+man's voice was touched with heavenly hope.
+
+
+The next morning, grandfather was astir with the birds.  The day was
+bright; and the weather--so long his daily care--was still a specialty
+of grandfather's.  Indeed, he seemed to live more and more in the past,
+the farther it receded.  For days he would talk of little else but the
+far-off Scottish hills, and the glint of the sun through the clouds
+upon the heather, and the solemn responsibilities of the lambing
+season, and the sagacity of his sheep-dogs, all of whose names he
+remembered.  How often, especially, would he tell us of "Ettrick" and
+"Yarrow," two of his choicest collies, named for his native streams.
+"This wad be a graun' day for the sheep," or "there'll be mony a lammie
+i' the plaid-neuk the day," were frequent opinions of his when sunshine
+or storm provoked them.
+
+Poor dear grandfather!  Far though he was from his beloved Scotland, it
+was beautiful to see how deep and tranquil was the happiness of his
+heart.  He knew, of course, how sore was our own poverty, and I think
+it chafed him sorely that he could not help.  When he first came out to
+the Western world, and to his only child, I really believe he thought
+the hundred pounds he brought with him would make him well-to-do for
+life.  His idea was that all investments, in this new land, break into
+golden harvest.  So he had duly invested his hundred pounds--some
+eloquent agent had led him on--in some sort of mining stocks.
+Old-country people are so prone to think that the earth, on this new
+continent, and the waters under the earth, and the mountains on top of
+it, all turn to gold if you touch them.  Well, he invested his hundred
+sovereigns, and that was the end of grandfather's financial career--but
+have I not told all about this already?
+
+Yet he was happy in his children--for so he regarded us both--and in
+his children's children.  But that morning, the morning after Gordon
+came home, he seemed collapsed with sorrow.  Perhaps it was the
+reaction--I do not know--but it was evident, anyhow, with what
+absorbing love grandfather's heart had gone out to the now departed
+Harold.  His face was thin and worn, as if he had been ill; his voice
+was husky and his step was slow.  All through breakfast he never broke
+the silence except to speak of Harold, and it was pathetic to hear the
+various suggestions the loving heart conjured up as to the best way to
+get him back.  He knew little about law, dear grandfather, except the
+law of love.  Finally Gordon told him, perhaps too candidly, that
+Harold was doubtless by this time from under his country's flag, and
+that there was no absolution unless the money were refunded--not even
+then, he added, except by the grace of those whom he had wronged.
+
+"He'll write to us onyway, will he no'?" grandfather asked plaintively
+at last.
+
+"Oh, yes," I said quite confidently; "oh, yes, he'll write."
+
+But Gordon seemed anxious to prepare me for possible disappointment.
+"He likely will, if he's getting on well," he said slowly, fearfully;
+"if he succeeds, wherever he is, I mean.  If he doesn't, I'm--I'm
+afraid."
+
+I dissented warmly from this.  Harold loved his mother, I affirmed.
+And then I remember how Gordon said something about the change in a
+boy's whole nature that an experience of this kind is liable to bring
+about; a word or two about the moral sensibilities being blunted, or
+something of that sort.  Whereat I flared up in warm remonstrance,
+breaking into eulogy of my son.  It was not till afterwards that I
+realized how all my thought of Harold, when he came home that night,
+and when he went away, was always of his misfortune and never of his
+sin--almost as if he had been pitifully wronged.  But I suppose that is
+the way of every woman's heart, and I cannot but think it is partly
+God's way too.
+
+Early in the forenoon grandfather disappeared, sending word by a
+messenger that he had availed himself of an opportunity to go into the
+country.  It was evening when he returned, but I never saw a man more
+changed.  His face was aglow with strange enthusiasm and the signs of
+healing were upon him.
+
+"I juist couldna' help it," he said apologetically as he entered, his
+shepherd's crook in his hand.  "I was fair longin' to see the sheep,
+an' the hills, yince mair--my heart was sair for them.  An' I got a
+chance wi' a mon that was gaein' oot--he was settin' up some kind o'
+machinnery.  An' I had a graun' day on the hills," he went on
+delightedly; "it was fair graun'.  There was a laddie mindin' some
+sheep--he was a fine laddie; he minded me o' Harold--and I helpit him
+a' the day.  There wasna' ony heather, nae doot--but the hills were
+bonnie--and the laddie had a collie dog or twa that minded me o' hame.
+An' I carried yin puir wee lammie in my arms--it was ailin'--and I
+lilted the auld psalms yince mair aneath God's blue sky; it was maist
+as guid as hame," and the aged voice was all aglow with gladness.
+
+"You had a lovely day for it, grandfather," I said, smiling.
+
+"Aye," he answered, "it was a bonnie day--an' aboot yin or twa o'clock
+there cam' a wee bit rain--a Scotch mist, ye ken, and it minded me o'
+hame--oh, it's been a graun' day the day.  But I canna' think what it
+was gied me sic' a longin' for the hills--it was fair fearsome--it's
+no' a'thegither canny, I'm dootin'," and the old man shook his head in
+an eerie kind of way, so characteristic of his race.  "I'm gaein' to
+bed," he said, moving already towards the stair; "I'm fair din oot.
+
+"What's yon black thing hangin' there?" he suddenly demanded, the keen
+eyes resting on the door at the back of the hall.
+
+I paid little or no attention to the question, deeming it unimportant;
+we went on talking for a few minutes.
+
+"Lassie," he suddenly broke out again, "run, lassie, an' see what's yon
+black thing hangin' on the door."
+
+Dorothy went as directed.  "It's mamma's rain coat," she said a moment
+later, returning with it in her hand.
+
+"Aye," said the old man, apparently relieved, "aye, it's naethin' but a
+cloak--but it fashed me to look at it; I thocht it lookit like--like
+yin o' thae crape things," he added with an embarrassed little laugh.
+This gave me a queer creepy feeling at the time, but I thought little
+more about it then; it came back to us later on, however.
+
+Grandfather went to bed immediately, and Gordon and I were not long
+behind him.  It was about one o'clock, I think, or perhaps a little
+later, when I was wakened from my sleep by a strange sound, half groan,
+half cry.  I went out at once into the hall and soon traced the sign of
+distress to grandfather's room.  The old man was raised up in the bed,
+partly sitting; and the light I quickly kindled told the story in a
+flash as I glanced at the ashen face.
+
+"It's my heart," he said huskily; "it's yin o' thae spells like I had
+lang syne.  It winna' be lang, I'm dootin'."
+
+I was terrified, for I thought I could descry the stamp of death
+already.  There was a majestic calm, an unwonted stillness, upon the
+old man's face.  I called Gordon at once; he evidently shared my fear,
+for he rushed away for a doctor.  It was but a few minutes before he
+returned with the physician.  The latter was not long in telling us the
+truth.
+
+"It's simply a total collapse," he whispered to Gordon and me as we
+followed him out into the hall.  "He can hardly live till the morning;
+yes, it's his heart--a case of syncope.  Don't be alarmed if he grows
+delirious, or semi-delirious--they often do, just from sheer weakness.
+That roaming about the country, to-day, that you spoke of--and the
+excitement of it--have probably been too much for him."
+
+"Shall we tell him?" asked Gordon, pale and trembling.
+
+"Perhaps it would be just as well.  Has he everything in order?--his
+will, I mean, and everything like that, you know?"
+
+"That isn't important," said Gordon; "father had little to will--yet I
+think he ought to be told.  But I cannot--I couldn't do it.  Will you?"
+
+The doctor nodded and turned slowly towards the room.  We did not hear
+what he said, but a moment later grandfather faintly called for Gordon.
+We both went into the chamber of death.
+
+"Rax me my wallet--you'll find it in the kist," said the old man,
+pointing towards a trunk in the corner of the room.
+
+Gordon handed him a large leather case which a brief search revealed.
+The shaking hand fumbled a moment or two before it withdrew a somewhat
+bulky document.  "This is what they gi'ed me for my hunnerd pounds," he
+said, a half-shamed smile coming over the strong features.  "They ca'ed
+them stocks," he added, "stocks in a mine, ye ken.  I got the shares
+for saxpence each--an' they said they was awfu' valuable--and I tuk a'
+they'd gie me for a hunnerd pounds."  Then he named a certain mine in
+Northern Ontario, and I thought I saw the faintest smile on Gordon's
+face.  He took the paper from his father's hand and laid it on the
+table.
+
+"I made the shares ower to Helen, lang syne," the old man said humbly;
+"gin they turn oot to be worth onythin', they're for her.  I didna' ken
+when I micht be ta'en awa'--an' it's aye weel to be ready."
+
+I faltered some poor words of thanks which the sinking man did not seem
+to hear.  A new, strange light came into his eyes as we waited beside
+his bed.  The doctor had withdrawn now, powerless to do more.
+
+"Gang an' fetch the plaidie," he suddenly directed, "the yin I used to
+wear at hame; an' pit it aboot my shoulders--the nicht's growin' cauld.
+An' I canna' find the sheep," he suddenly cried, half starting in his
+bed; "I hear them bleatin' on the hills--but I canna' find them a'."
+
+Then his eyes, large and luminous with the light of the unseen,
+revolved slowly till they fixed themselves on Gordon.  "Kneel doon,
+laddie," he said gently, yet with the majesty of a prophet, "kneel doon
+beside me."
+
+Gordon knelt low by the bed; one trembling hand, outstretched, was laid
+upon his head.  The dying eyes looked far beyond into the Unknown.
+"Gordon," he said, almost in a whisper, "I see yir mither--she's wi' us
+noo."  I actually started and looked up, following the lifted gaze.
+"An' she's lookin' doon at ye, my son--an' the love is fair shinin'
+frae her een.  It was her that made ye a minister, my laddie.  When ye
+was a wee bit bairn, me and her gi'ed ye up to God; an' mony a night,
+when ye didna' ken, she bendit by yir bed an' pleaded wi' God to mak'
+ye a minister--a minister, my laddie, o' the Everlastin' Gospel.  Div
+ye hear me, Gordon?"
+
+"Yes, father, yes," and Gordon was sobbing now; "yes, I hear, father."
+
+"An' she wants ye to keep the troth, my son.  I'm gaein' to her
+noo--an' I'll tell her ye'll be a guid minister, Gordon, a guid
+minister o' the New Testament, leadin' puir sinners to the Cross.  Wull
+ye no' bid me tell her that, my laddie?" and the dying lips paused for
+answer.
+
+"Yes," faltered the broken man beside the bed, "yes, father, tell
+mother that."
+
+The light of peace stole across the aged face.  "I'm ready to gang
+noo," the gentle voice went on, "an' yir mither's beckonin'.  I'm
+comin', mither; I'll be wi' ye soon.  An' Gordon's comin' tae--an'
+Helen--an' they'll bring baith the bairns wi' them."  Then his eyes
+turned slowly upon Gordon.  "I'm ready to gang noo in peace," he said
+faintly--"but there's yin puir lammie," a troubled expression looking
+out from the dying eyes, "there's yin puir lammie that I canna' find.
+Oh, my son," the voice rising again and the prophet-like eyes fastened
+upon Gordon, "tak' guid care o' the sheep--it's an awesome thing to be
+an unfaithfu' shepherd; tak' care o' the sheep, my laddie--an' where's
+Harold?  Is the bairn no' hame the nicht?"
+
+Then swift delirium seemed to seize him, and he rose violently where he
+lay, the last eddy of life swirling in the sullen stream of death.  "I
+canna' find the lamb that's wannered," he cried, in a voice that
+startled us; "I canna' find it, an' the mirk is fallin'.  Ettrick,
+come!--ho!  Yarrow.  Where are ye, Yarrow?  Find it, my bonnie--find it
+and bring it hame."  Then suddenly the dying lips pressed themselves
+together and a faint whistle floated out on the midnight air.
+
+I seized Gordon by the shoulder.  "Hush," said my husband, his face
+like death itself; "hush--he's calling his dogs."
+
+"They're breakin'," he cried despairingly; "the sheep's
+scatterin'--they're gaein' to wanner--where's my crook?  Gordon, bide
+ye here, my laddie, till yir faither turns them back.  Come,
+Ettrick--Yarrow, come!" and again the dread whistle floated from his
+lips.
+
+We tried to compose him, speaking tender words.  Slowly the look of
+peace stole back upon the old man's face.  He lay with eyes almost
+closed.  "They're a' hame noo," he murmured gently; "aye, they're a'
+safe in the fold, my laddie, an' they'll gang oot nae mair till the
+mirk is by--we can rest noo till the mornin'," as he lay back in calm
+content.
+
+Suddenly the dying eyes were lifted to his son.  "Lilt me a psalm," he
+murmured; "we'll sing afore we gang to sleep; but dinna' wake yir
+mither--yir mither's restin'."
+
+"What shall I sing, father?" Gordon asked in an awesome voice.
+
+"A psalm, my--laddie," the words coming faint and slow; "ye ken the yin
+I'm needin'--there's only yin psalm for a shepherd."
+
+Gordon looked at me.  One hand was in his father's; the other was
+outstretched to me, and I knelt beside him.  Then with trembling voice,
+my clearer note mingling with Gordon's quivering bass, we sang together:
+
+  "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want--
+  He makes me down to lie,"
+
+and just as we were midway in the majestic strain
+
+  "Yea though I walk through death's dark vale
+  Yet will I fear none ill"
+
+the old shepherd passed through the valley with his Lord.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_A SELECT CONGREGATION_
+
+Grandfather was right.  The Good Shepherd had brought Gordon back.  I
+am quite at a loss to tell just how the change came about, or what its
+actual evidences were--but the great ministry in accomplishing it was
+the ministry of sorrow.  Sorrow and love--that ever undivided
+pair--seemed to have conspired for their perfect work.  It began, I
+think, with the crushing weight that fell upon our hearts in the loss
+of Harold and in all the shame and anguish connected with it.  That was
+God's way, I have always thought, of teaching Gordon how much a
+father's heart can suffer--and the inevitable outcome of that is the
+Cross itself if God our Father be.  How could His love escape love's
+inevitable pain, any more than ours?  Then, besides, grandfather's
+home-going had been a second ordination for Gordon, and the ministry
+that followed was new and beautiful.  So was mine, if I may designate
+my poor service by such a lofty word; for now I knew beyond a
+peradventure that God hears and answers prayer.  I verily believe
+grandfather and I prayed him back between us.
+
+The very day after Gordon's father entered into rest I was sitting in
+the gloaming, thinking of the life that had gone from us; one never
+knows how dear is an aged life, till the silver-haired presence is
+withdrawn.  And I heard something that started my heart singing
+heavenward with gratitude.
+
+Gordon and Dorothy were at the piano, on which our daughter now loved
+to show her new-found skill.  And softly on the evening air there
+floated out to me the strains of the hymn he had asked her to play.
+Surely there is no music, this side of heaven, so sweet as that which a
+man's strong voice and a girl's fluttering note combine to make.
+
+"We'll sing it again," I heard Gordon saying; "every word is golden,
+Dorothy.  Come now:
+
+  'Jesus loves me, He who died
+  Heaven's gate to open wide;
+  He will wash away my sin
+  Let His little child come in'"
+
+and then followed some words of Gordon's which I could hardly catch.
+But I heard enough to know that he was teaching our little girl the
+great and blessed doctrine which he himself had learned by his mother's
+knee.  How I gloried in this new theology, asserting once again its
+holy spell upon my husband's heart, no human tongue can tell.
+
+
+The months went by.  And if ever a man was happy in his work, that man
+was Gordon Laird.  In his work, I say--for our home lay still under the
+shadow of its great and bitter sorrow.  After one or two unsatisfactory
+letters, followed by a final one of despairing note, no word had come
+from Harold.  This was what Gordon had feared.  Those months stand out
+before me now, each one almost separate in its pain, like sombre
+mountain peaks robed in cloud.  I know all about the anguish of those
+who roam some desert waste searching for a spring, or with parched lips
+upturned to the unsoftening skies.  The slowly dying hope, the burning
+fever whenever I heard the postman's knock, the sickening
+disappointment, all surge again like a turgid flood about me when I
+allow my mind to dwell on those days of silence.
+
+Yet if I suffered I believe Gordon, in a deep, silent way, suffered
+even more.  My heart ached more for him than for myself.  I almost came
+to change my mind as to which of the children had first place in
+Gordon's heart--it seemed to cry out now for Harold as for nothing else
+on earth.  Although, and I write it gladly for the comfort of some like
+stricken soul, all this worked its gracious ministry upon his troubled
+life.  Embattled long as his spirit had been with inward misgiving and
+silent doubt, this last dark mystery would have wrought sore havoc, I
+cannot but believe, had it not been so terrible.  Its very fierceness
+of attack drove him in upon the Lord whom he had found afresh; and his
+soul found its comfort in simplicity of faith and childlike urgency of
+prayer.  The songs we shall sing in the Yonderland shall give their
+chiefest praise for the burdens that were too heavy to be borne alone.
+
+I have spoken of Gordon's urgency of prayer.  It was he, not I, who
+suggested that we should have a set time, every morning, when we should
+pray for nothing else but this--that Harold might be brought back to
+us.  And it was Gordon, not I, who led Dorothy to include in her
+evening prayer the plea that God would bring her brother home.
+
+Yes, I think sometimes that the great Father led my husband into the
+wilderness for this very purpose, to make him a minister after His own
+heart.  I said to him once, just about the time we first began to
+realize we weren't going to hear from Harold:
+
+"All this won't affect your life-work, will it, Gordon--your preaching,
+I mean?" for it was only natural, after all that had transpired, that I
+should have some secret misgivings.
+
+His answer lingers with me like a chime of bells, though it came in
+tones subdued and low: "No," he said; "no--I'm going to preach now to
+broken hearts."
+
+"Then you'll never lack a congregation, my darling," was the response I
+made; and I have always thought it was given me in that hour what to
+speak.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_THE NEWS A BROKER BROUGHT_
+
+Nor did the congregation fail to come.  Gordon had wonderful powers, as
+everybody must know by this time--he had always had them--and now he
+had a wonderful message.  His heart, and not his brain, was now the
+source of his splendid sermons; a wounded heart at that--and it is from
+the crushed and broken flower that the sweetest perfume breathes.  So
+it was no wonder that his humble pulpit became like a golden fount to
+parched and thirsty souls; and the pathway trodden by the throng that
+pressed about it became ever more deep and wide.
+
+People came to Gordon's little church from every part of Hertford.  I
+did not wonder at this, for rich and poor alike will crowd about a
+spring; but little by little it became evident that not a few of our
+worshippers were from Gordon's old congregation in St. Andrew's.  It's
+wonderful how everybody loves a hero--especially if the hero doesn't
+know he's one.  I was the first to notice this; or, at least, the first
+to say anything about it.  Gordon gave no sign of exultation, but I
+knew it filled his heart to overflowing.  Strangely enough, one of
+those who by and by were most regular in attendance was Mr. Ashton
+himself, his first appearance almost striking Gordon dumb.  But I
+always thought he really began to esteem my husband that night Gordon
+dealt so faithfully with him.  Besides, he had lost his own son--by the
+more kindly way of death--and I attributed it partly, too, to that.  It
+matters not.
+
+This feature of our congregation--the attendance of St. Andrew's folk,
+I mean--became so pronounced at last that it began to be rumoured about
+the city that many of them would like to call their old minister back
+again, if he would return to their denomination.  I spoke of it once to
+Gordon--my heart could not conceal its eagerness--but he received it
+after such a fashion that I mentioned it no more.  Not then, at least.
+But I'm afraid I hoped and longed; for I was born a woman, and pride
+died hard within me.
+
+Our means were still as meagre, our struggle as sore as ever.
+Besides--and how pitiful was the effort--we were trying in a poor
+helpless way to save a little for the payment of Harold's debt; we
+tried to set aside just so much as his schooling would have cost, if he
+had never left us.  Every penny thus laid away had our hearts' blood
+upon it; and was, I doubt not, precious in His sight who gave those two
+mites their fame.
+
+Things were at their very darkest along this line about four or five
+months after Harold went away.  And it was just then something happened
+that showed conclusively which way the ruling passion of Gordon's heart
+was turned.
+
+I was almost weeping over my accounts that night.  These I kept in a
+ridiculously large scribbling book, marking down the smallest item of
+expenditure; for Gordon entrusted our finances to my hands, if so
+elaborate a term may be devoted to so scanty an exchequer.  Generally I
+brought the account out pretty even at the close of every
+week--"sundries" were a great help towards this happy end.  But this
+particular night everything seemed all "through other," to quote a
+favourite phrase of grandfather's.  Nothing was clear except that there
+was a deficit--and that was dreadfully evident; but even the
+all-adjusting sundries could not show just how or whence it came.
+
+So there we sat, I with the big scribbling book before me, a freshly
+sharpened pencil in my hand, a cloud of perplexity on my brow, gazing,
+a little moistly I'm afraid, at the plaintive statement of receipts and
+expenditure.
+
+"Never mind, Helen," Gordon said, "you've done the best you can--and I
+know you've made every dollar go as far as any woman in the world could
+do.  Don't bother any more about it--charge that deficit up to profit
+and loss and call it square."
+
+"But it's nothing to laugh about," I answered gloomily; "we're going
+behind, Gordon--just as sure as anything, we're going behind."
+
+"Only financially," he said lightly; "we're going ahead other ways, my
+dear."
+
+"But that's a lot," I protested.
+
+"It doesn't seem much to me," Gordon replied, the lightness all
+vanished now.
+
+"What do you mean?" I said, looking up a little testily, I fear.
+
+"Oh, only this; when anybody has a sorrow so much greater--like
+ours--financial troubles don't amount to much.  I want Harold--oh,
+Helen, I want our boy back again," with which he broke out, strong man
+though he was, into such a storm of crying as would have done credit to
+the tearfullest of women.
+
+This puzzled, almost alarmed, me.  Indeed, I was beginning to fear, and
+not without more reasons than one, that the long tension of grief and
+disappointment were proving too much for Gordon's intense and sensitive
+nature.  I looked at him a moment as he sat before me with his head
+bowed in his hands; then I did what I believe was the very wisest
+thing--I comforted him for a little as best I could in my woman's way,
+though my heart was just as heavy as his own; then I said we really
+must go on with our accounts.  And in a minute or two we were both
+bended once again above the big scribbling book, going into every item
+as carefully as though we were auditing the books of the Bank of
+England.
+
+Suddenly, just as I was declaring that the butcher must have sent that
+same bill twice, a ring came to the door.  I was glad.  Gordon answered
+the summons, as he always did at night.  And, to my amazement, our
+visitor turned out to be a Mr. Bradwin, one of the well-known brokers
+of Hertford, and a prominent member of our old congregation in St.
+Andrew's.
+
+"Excuse my calling at this time of night, Dr. Laird," he apologized,
+after he was seated and a few words of greeting had passed between us;
+"but the fact is I've just received some news that I think you'll find
+decidedly interesting"--I cannot be positive, but I really think he
+glanced about the shabbily furnished room as he spoke--"and I couldn't
+wait till to-morrow to tell you."
+
+"I hope it's good news, Mr. Bradwin," said Gordon, a very faint smile
+playing on his face.
+
+My impulsive nature got the better of my judgment.  "Is it about St.
+Andrew's, Mr. Bradwin?" I asked in an eager voice, my eyes leaping from
+his face to Gordon's.
+
+"No, it isn't," replied our caller, and my eyes fell.  "But it's good
+news for all that--decidedly good news, I should say.  It's about
+something a little more important--to you, at least; something that has
+more to do with your happiness, I fancy."
+
+Gordon sprang to his feet and his voice rang out like a pistol-shot:
+"It's about Harold, sir--it's about our boy!"  He was standing in front
+of Mr. Bradwin now, his cheeks like snow, his eyes like fire.  It was
+almost awful to see him.  "Thank God," he cried, his voice half a laugh
+and half a cry; "you've heard where he is, haven't you?--and you've
+come to tell us.  Why didn't we think of it before, Helen?--we might
+have known that was the news that couldn't wait.  Tell me, sir--tell us
+both," and in his eagerness he bent over and took the astonished man by
+the shoulders.
+
+A moment later his withdrawn hands were clasped upon his eyes with a
+gesture of inexpressible grief and he was groping his way to a chair.
+No word had been uttered; but the denial spoke from Mr. Bradwin's face,
+or else he shook his head in disavowal--I could not see, but I knew
+that the hope glowing a moment since in Gordon's heart was in ashes
+now.  Our visitor's news was not of Harold.
+
+"I'm so sorry," Mr. Bradwin began confusedly; "I forgot all about
+that--about your son; and I really almost hate now to tell you what I
+was so anxious to tell a little while ago.  But it's good news, at any
+rate--even if it's not the best."  Having said this he paused, looking
+from one to the other of his auditors.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Bradwin?" I asked, not a little curious.
+
+"It's about some stocks--some shares," replied the broker, feeling a
+little more at ease with the familiar words; "such assets--stocks, I
+mean, especially mining stocks--are always springing little surprises
+on the people that hold them.  Both ways, Mrs. Laird, you know--both
+good and bad," as he smiled, a little artificially I thought, at me.
+"But in this case I'm glad to be able to say the surprise is a pleasant
+one--a decidedly pleasant one, Mrs. Laird; indeed, uncommonly so, I
+should say.  Quite beyond the ordinary, as I think you'll agree."
+
+I stammered out something about my ignorance of all such matters.
+Gordon said nothing, for interest was now dead within him.
+
+"You are aware, of course," Mr. Bradwin resumed, "you're aware, Mrs.
+Laird, that the shares are in your name?--they were transferred to you
+by Mr. Laird, your husband's father, before his death."
+
+"Oh," I exclaimed, beginning to remember; "you mean those papers
+grandfather gave us?"
+
+"Precisely, madam--at least, I presume we're thinking of the same
+thing.  Your father-in-law invested five hundred dollars, a hundred
+pounds rather, in the mine--and they've just struck a fine vein of
+silver--the richest yet discovered in New Ontario, there's no doubt of
+that.  The old gentleman got his shares for a song--about ten cents
+each, I believe--and now they've jumped to an almost fabulous price.
+So the profit is tremendous," as Mr. Bradwin drew his chair close up to
+mine, all embarrassment vanished now.
+
+"How much are they worth?" I asked with feminine precipitancy.
+
+Mr. Bradwin drew a pencil from his pocket and reached over to the table
+for a piece of paper.  It did seem funny that the scrap he picked up
+and began to cover with figures was that wretched butcher's bill that
+had been giving Gordon and me so much trouble a few minutes before.
+
+"Surely I've made a mistake," he said after a little silence; "it seems
+an incredibly large amount.  No, that must be it," drawing in his
+breath in an awe-stricken kind of way after he had revised his
+reckoning at least three times; "yes, your shares are worth that, at
+the very lowest computation," and he handed the greasy butcher's bill,
+transfigured and glorified now, over to my shaking hand.  "I'm
+commissioned to offer you that much, madam, for every share you hold."
+
+I don't think I heard him.  My first move was to Gordon's desk in the
+corner, a great womanlike fear seizing me lest the precious papers had
+been lost, or that they might reveal something to disturb this fairy
+dream.  I fumbled in one of the drawers; they were there; I drew them
+forth.  Yes, it was just as the broker had assured me.  The number of
+shares was so plain that he who ran might read.
+
+"Hold on to those certificates, Mrs. Laird," I think I heard Mr.
+Bradwin say; "there's a heap of happiness in them."  But I paid no
+attention to his words as I moved over, my eyes so cloudy I could
+hardly see, to where my husband still sat in silence.  I cared nothing
+that a stranger was looking on, thought of nothing, remembered nothing
+but the long years of bitter poverty and secret struggle through which
+poor Gordon had carried on his work so bravely.  I threw myself into
+his arms, my whole frame shaken with the emotion that would not be
+repressed; I clasped him about the neck, the precious documents crushed
+in my fevered grasp as I drew the yielding head gently down upon my
+bosom, faltering out as best I could the tidings that our poverty was
+ended and our days of darkness past and gone.  And I told him how I
+loved him for all the splendid courage and silent self-denial that he
+would never need to practice more.
+
+"I'd advise you not to sell outright, madam--that's my advice to you as
+a friend," the broker's voice announced in a monotone.  I looked up a
+moment--the man's back was turned; (wherefore I have thought more
+kindly of brokers ever since).  "Your best way will be to sell a
+certain amount--and retain an interest; an interest, Mrs. Laird.
+They're going ahead to develop the mine--and then you're sure of both,
+Mrs. Laird.  And I--I congratulate you, madam."
+
+I fear my response was very scant, if indeed any came at all.  At any
+rate, Mr. Bradwin withdrew a minute or two later, announcing his
+purpose to return the following day.
+
+But it could not have been more than a minute or two after his
+departure when we heard the footfall of some one ascending the steps to
+the door.  "He must be coming back," I said; "I suppose he's forgotten
+something."
+
+"I don't think it's a man's step," said Gordon; "it's a boy, if I'm not
+mistaken."
+
+His surmise was correct.  A boy it was, and a very agitated and urgent
+boy at that.  He was ragged too.
+
+"I want you to come with me," the lad broke out as soon as he was
+admitted, fixing his earnest gaze on Gordon.  "I was at Bethany
+Sunday-school last Sunday--and I know you--and I want you to come home
+with me quick," twirling his battered hat in his hand as he spoke.
+
+"What's your name, my boy?" asked Gordon, moving over to him.
+
+"It's Tim--Tim Rayfield--an' we live on Finner's Flats," naming the
+most notorious section of the city, part of it bordering on Gordon's
+parish.
+
+"Do you always attend Bethany, Tim?" asked Gordon, smiling down at the
+desperately earnest face.
+
+"No, sir, wasn't there only once," answered the boy; "but I learned a
+lot--an' won't you come, sir?  There ain't no time to lose.  My
+father's dyin', sir--an' I want you to get him in."
+
+"What?" and Gordon's face was full of amazement; "in where?--where do
+you want me to get your father in?--you mean the hospital, do you, my
+boy?"
+
+"No, sir--into heaven.  That's what the teacher said about it last
+Sunday--about when folks was dyin'--an' how they get 'em in.  An' dad,
+he's dyin'--an' I want you to get him in."
+
+The face of the poor ignorant child was aglow with its eagerness of
+hope and fear.  The signs of poverty and neglect were everywhere about
+him, and the ill-nourished frame told how severe had life's struggle
+been to him.  But the glint of the Eternal was on the grimy face,
+upturned to Gordon in wistful entreaty.  His plea was the plea of love,
+his prayer the prayer of faith; and the scene could not have been more
+holy if some white-robed priest had been interceding before the Throne.
+
+Gordon's arms went out impulsively towards the lad; I believe he put
+them a moment about his neck.
+
+"Yes, my boy," he said in an unsteady voice; "yes, I'll go.  And we'll
+get your father in--yes, please God, we'll get him in."
+
+They went out together into the darkness, the boy leading the way with
+such haste as stirs the feet of those who race with death.  And I was
+left alone, the little table still littered with the relics of our
+financial conference.  The stainful butcher's bill lay on top of
+all--and the magic document, with its story of our shares, was still
+held tightly in my hand.
+
+I did not open it again; but I sat long looking at it--and it struck me
+even then how helpless it was to aid in the real tragedies of life.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_WHERE GUS CAST ANCHOR_
+
+I have asked Gordon to write down for me his experiences of that night.
+Two considerations led me to this course: first, because the incident
+had so much to do with his own soul's life, his faith, his future
+ministry; second, because Gordon was so much more able than I, when one
+of life's great events was concerned, to tell it as it should be told.
+
+When I asked him to undertake this duty--to write out the story of that
+midnight errand--I practically had to tell him I was putting our life
+experience, or a large portion of it, down in black and white.  But I
+don't think Gordon ever suspected it was meant for other eyes than
+those of our own immediate dear ones--and one of the great moments of
+my life will be when my husband sees this book, if, indeed, it shall
+ever deserve a name so great.
+
+Here is Gordon's story of that night, just as he wrote it out
+himself--I told him my story began with a foreword, so he said he'd
+have one too.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+_Foreword:_
+
+I am writing this, so personal though it seem, because Helen wants it.
+If it hadn't been for the children's mother, their father never could
+have told what he is now about to write.  Some time, perhaps long after
+my poor day's work is done, they may read this page from the volume of
+their father's life.  May the same grace enrich, the same truth ennoble
+their youthful lives: "The angel that redeemed me from all evil bless"
+them both, as a father's lips prayed long ago.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+When little Tim Rayfield told me he wanted me to "get his father in," I
+knew one of the crucial moments of my life had come.  Indeed, I felt
+the hour was almost as critical for me as for Tim's dying father.  Why,
+I need not state at length.  But perhaps I ought to say this much, that
+I felt a new sense of power as I pressed on through the night with
+Tim's grimy hand in mine.  I use the word "new" advisedly--for I must
+tell, no matter whose eye may yet read the confession, that, for some
+years before, I had shrunk from such scenes as these in helplessness
+and despair; I had lost the joy of the miraculous in my ministry; I can
+honestly say that I always tried to be faithful to every duty, but
+little by little the glory and the power of a Supernatural Gospel had
+slipped away from me.
+
+I have seen people smile when I use the word "supernatural" as the only
+fitting term to characterize a gospel.  But such as smile have very
+smiling lives.  The word--and all that is behind the word--has a very
+different meaning when laughter is banished from the lips, when the
+voice of joy is hushed, when some fateful sorrow falls and we can only
+stumble on through the encircling gloom.  Such an hour came to me,
+filled with a bitterness worse than death; it was then I found my Lord
+anew.  When the billows overswept and whelmed me I learned to pray;
+when the shadows closed in about me I descried the Divine Friend among
+them; when I lost my boy, and my father-heart was broken, I learned of
+One who gave His own Son, His well-beloved Son.
+
+Let me revise my words.  It was not I who "found my Lord"; but He found
+me--He and Helen--and they sought me hand in hand.
+
+"That's the room," said Tim, panting from his haste, for the little
+fellow had led me at great speed; "there, d'ye see that light in the
+window--that upstairs window?"
+
+I saw, and in a moment we were climbing a decrepit stair.  Groping our
+way along an unlighted passage, my guide, still clinging to my hand,
+turned sharply into the squalid home.  It consisted evidently of two
+rooms, the inner of which contained the couch whereon lay Tim's sinking
+father.
+
+The boy never stopped till he had led me to the very edge of the bed.
+A few tattered covers wrapped the form of the dying man.  His face,
+already conforming to the stamp of death, told the story of a
+lifetime's sin.  Nobody could look upon it without reading there the
+tokens of a life of passion and excess.  The heavy eyes looked up
+sullenly into my face as I stood above him.
+
+"It's the preacher, Gus--don't," pleaded a woman who bent above him;
+for his lips were framing some word she evidently feared my ears would
+catch.  "Don't, Gus--he's goin' to help you if he can; Tim fetched
+him--he's the preacher from the Hollow, an' Tim seen him last Sunday."
+
+The man's set features seemed to relax a little as I took his hand.  I
+hesitated as to how I should best begin--but he opened the way himself.
+
+"I'm all ready for sea, boss," he broke out with a gasping laugh; "last
+voyage, looks like--an' nobody don't know the port.  But I've got my
+papers, Cap'n--I've got my papers, an' I'll have to sail."
+
+"Don't mind him, sir," his wife said in a hushed voice; "he's an old
+sailor, you see--only two years since he quit the sea and come here to
+live.  He got his left foot hurt--an' that's what's killin' him
+now--he's got gangarene, sir."
+
+"Goin' to be a dirty night, boss, by the looks o' things," the dying
+tar broke in with pitiful bravado; "the wind's risin', ain't it--better
+shorten sail, eh?"
+
+I put my face close to his.  "Do you want a pilot, my friend?" I asked
+him low.
+
+"Don't call me that," he retorted gruffly; "call me mate--I was mate on
+the _Dolphin_ when that dam crowbar fell on my foot."
+
+"Don't you want a pilot, mate?" I asked again.
+
+"Where to take me?" looking far through the window into the dark.
+
+"To the harbour," I answered softly.
+
+"I don't know where it is."
+
+"He knows."
+
+"Say," and the eyes were now fixed very intently on me; "I'm goin' to
+ask ye a question.  An' I want an answer straight--no tackin' or
+manoeuvrin'--d'ye think I'm dyin', Cap'n?"
+
+"Yes," I answered; "yes, you're dying, sir."
+
+"Then get him in," broke out poor Tim with a piteous wail as he
+presented himself in front of me and looked up into my face; "please
+get him in quick, afore he dies--that's what I fetched you for,
+sir--oh, please get him in."
+
+I had seen the day when I almost feared to be alone with a dying man.
+What I had to say, in those days, could be as well said to others as to
+him.  But now, as Tim besought me, and as his father looked up with
+eyes in which a yearning hope was already to be seen, I felt that no
+others must be near while I sought to help his soul.  So I asked Tim
+and his mother if they would withdraw to the adjoining room--they
+should be called, I said, if the summons came apace.
+
+Then I closed the door--for this hour had more than bridal
+holiness--and I gave myself in love to the dying soul.  The mock
+heroism, the banter, fell off from him like a garment, for I think he
+saw I believed in God.  I need not tell, must not reveal, all he
+disclosed to me from the dark storehouse of a wasted past.  But I met
+him, and his crimson sins, and his accusing conscience--I met them all,
+and at every turn, with the Cross of the Lord Jesus and with the
+all-atoning grace of God.  How I gloried in that hour in the great
+evangel!  And how there rolled about me, with tides ample like the
+ocean's, the thought of the magnitude and infinitude of the love of
+Christ!  And how--oh, blessed memory to my long beleaguered soul--I
+witnessed the ancient miracle with joy, marvelling anew at the
+greatness and glory of the Gospel, scorning with high contempt all that
+would raise its feeble hand against such power as may be seen wherever
+a sinful soul meets with the pardoning Lord!
+
+Over and over again I read to him from the third of John: "God so loved
+the world that He gave His only begotten son," its richness growing on
+my own soul as well as his.
+
+"Let me see that," said the dying mate; "I want to look at it--every
+cap'n reads the log himself."
+
+I gave him the book and held the lamp above him.
+
+"Ye haven't got another of them, have ye, sir?" he asked wistfully.
+
+"Of what?" said I.
+
+"Of this here book--I want to read it when you're gone; or Tim--Tim
+could read it to me."
+
+I told him, of course, that I would leave the book.
+
+"Turn down the page--mark the place," he said, handing me the volume.
+"I'm afeared I'd soon be driftin' again if we lost it."
+
+"I'll mark some other passages too," I suggested, "some almost equally
+beautiful."
+
+"That there one's enough," he said, sinking back faintly on his pillow.
+
+I sang him a hymn, the one that dying men should always hear; and then
+I had a little prayer with him.  His hands were folded and his eyes
+were closed.  When I rose from my knees he whispered something that I
+shall treasure while memory lasts.  But it needed only a glance to see
+that the end was near.  I opened the door to call his wife and child
+back to him.
+
+"Did you get him in, sir--did you get my father in?" were the first
+words that greeted me as little Tim's eyes leaped to mine.
+
+"Yes, my boy--yes, please God, your father will get in," though I could
+hardly speak for the tears that choked me, so full of elemental power
+was the pleading of the child.
+
+"Come, Nancy," and the old tar's voice was very tender; "come close up
+beside me.  My foot ain't hurtin', Nancy--an' my heart ain't
+hurtin'--nothin's hurtin' any more.  I've cast anchor."
+
+"What d'ye say, Gus?" his wife asked in a wondering voice.
+
+"I've cast anchor--where the preacher read.  You'll leave the book,
+sir?" his voice swelling for a moment--"an' you're sure ye marked the
+place?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "I'll leave it--and it's marked."
+
+"Call me mate," the strange impulse prompting him again.
+
+"I marked it, mate--and I turned down the page."
+
+"Then sing me that again--that bit about the gale."
+
+"What gale, mate?"
+
+"That gale--the gale of life--that's how it went before."
+
+I knew now what he meant.  Nancy's face was in her hands and little
+Tim's eyes were fixed lovingly on me as I began.  When I came to the
+lines:
+
+  "Hide me, oh my Saviour hide
+  Till the storm of life is past"
+
+the dying man suddenly interrupted: "That'll do," he said, his voice
+barely audible, "that's the bit--that's enough--that, an' the place ye
+marked."
+
+We were soon all standing by his bed.  The struggle was quickly over.
+Suddenly his face assumed an expression of peace so deep that I thought
+the harbour had been really won.  But his eyes opened wide and both
+hands went feebly out; Nancy took one in hers, the other clasped by
+little Tim.
+
+"The anchor holds," he murmured; "Nancy, the anchor holds."
+
+A moment later his wife turned from the bed, her apron to her face,
+groping her way with bitter outcry towards the adjoining room.  Tim
+followed; and through the open door I could hear the boy's shaking
+voice:
+
+"Don't cry, mammy; oh, mammy, don't cry so hard.  Dad got in,
+mother--the preacher got him in."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I sat up till Gordon got home that night, for I had much to discuss
+with him.  The precious document, with its wizard tidings of mining
+shares, was still before me as he entered; and I broke out with some
+word about what Mr. Bradwin had said.  But when I looked up and saw the
+far-off look of peace on Gordon's face, I knew it was sprung from some
+other source than this.
+
+"You seem so happy, Gordon," I said; "what makes it?"
+
+He told me; but when he spoke about that last scene--he has called it
+the anchor scene ever since--his voice faltered so he could hardly go
+on.
+
+"We'll put these away to-night," I said, picking up the papers.  "But
+what do you intend to do with--with the money, Gordon?"
+
+"I hadn't thought of it," he answered calmly.  Then, after a pause;
+"but I think we'll enlarge the chapel.  It needs it, you know--and this
+seems like a glorious chance to do it."
+
+I wonder if my face showed my dissent.  At any rate, I took the mighty
+charter and restored it to the desk.  "There's one thing we'll do
+first, Gordon," I said in a voice that implied finality, "and you won't
+dispute it, either."
+
+"What is it, Helen?" his words full of wonder.
+
+"We'll pay that--that debt of Harold's," I said, my face averted as I
+leaned over the desk.
+
+He was silent for long.  "Yes, Helen," he answered quietly at length;
+"yes, we'll do that first--that's as holy as the other.  Oh, Harold, my
+son, my son--I wonder where Harold is to-night," the words ringing with
+a nameless pain.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_"TO OLD POINT COMFORT, DEAR"_
+
+I shall begin this chapter, perhaps the closing chapter of my artless
+story, with the simple statement that we were back again in St.
+Andrew's Church.  This restoration was effected about seven months
+after the incident with which the last chapter had its close.  How it
+came about, or why, I shall not pause to tell.  But there was a vacancy
+there--in St. Andrew's, that is--and the thought of nearly the whole
+congregation had gradually turned towards Gordon.  He had proved his
+worth, had fought a fight so stern and long, and had come out of it
+with a faith so clear and a power so manifest, that it was only natural
+they should covet his ministry again.
+
+He returned gladly enough, pride and gratitude mingling in his heart;
+and the Presbytery seemed rejoiced to welcome him within their fold
+again.  He still retained Swan Hollow--this he insisted upon--as a kind
+of associate charge.  They gave him an assistant, and Gordon selected a
+young minister fresh from Edinboro', for Scotchmen are the most
+clannish of all living things--and they worked the two places together,
+taking the morning and evening services alternately.
+
+Going back to the church was gladsome enough to me.  But it was the
+veriest trifle compared with our return to the dear old manse, where
+our children had been born.  What memories thronged about us when the
+nightfall found us once again beneath the roof of St. Andrew's Manse!
+A few were there to welcome us; we tried to make merry with them--but
+my heart ached till they should be gone.  And then, hand in hand as in
+other days, Gordon and I went up-stairs to the little room where our
+treasures used to lie.  Only one was there that night, our lovely
+Dorothy, and she lay in slumbering beauty where she used to sleep
+before.  The other bed was beside hers as in the days of yore--I had
+directed that it should be so--but it was empty.
+
+Poor Gordon!  All the joy, the triumph even, of his return to the scene
+of our former life was lost in sorrow because that bed was empty.
+
+"I'd sooner be in the poorest hovel, Helen," he said as he stood beside
+the unused couch, "if Harold were only back--Harold and Dorothy.  Our
+cup of happiness would be full, wouldn't it, dear, if both were only
+here?"
+
+"But he'll come back some day," I tried to assure him; "that's why I
+have his bed all ready--everything has always come right, Gordon, even
+if it did come late."
+
+"If we only knew where he is," Gordon went on, not seeming to hear;
+"but it looks as if we'd never learn.  Do you know," and the strong
+voice was choked with tears again, "do you know, Helen, what I wonder
+every night before I go to sleep?"
+
+"No, what is it, Gordon?"
+
+"I always wonder if he's cold--or hungry.  But especially if he's cold.
+Oh, surely there's nothing so sweet to a father as tucking his children
+up at night--so they won't be cold.  After we left here, the home we
+went to was so little, and so hard to heat--but don't you remember how
+we used to go in and tuck them up, so warm and cozy?"
+
+I tried my best to comfort him, though my heart had its own load to
+carry.  For the dark mystery still hung about us; we had heard never a
+word from Harold.  His debt was paid--as has been told, or implied,
+already--and nothing really stood in the way of his coming back except
+that we did not know where to find him.  And every effort to discern
+his whereabouts had ended in utter failure.  But we still kept the
+little tryst, still kept praying on, still hoping and trusting that the
+Great Father would staunch the wound which no human hand could heal.
+
+The summer passed and still no tidings came.
+
+Then I began to fear seriously for Gordon.  The very splendour of his
+make-up was his peril; it is ever so with natures such as his.  And his
+sorrow seemed to find expression in an ever more passionate devotion to
+his work, a devotion that was making him the idol of his people, even
+if it brought him daily nearer to collapse.
+
+Which came at last.  It was one Sabbath in early November, and Gordon
+had preached that morning from the text, "I will arise and go unto my
+father."  I suppose it was the tragedy whose home was his own broken
+heart that inspired him; in any case, he poured his soul out that day
+with a passion and pathos such as none could have imagined who did not
+feel the torrent of his power.  He seemed to interpret the very heart
+of a lonely and imploring God.
+
+But what the effort took out of him nobody saw but me.  That he was
+utterly exhausted was evident as he walked home after church, but I
+thought little of it; yet, even then, I noticed a strange incoherency
+in his speech, and a tremulousness about his voice, that boded ill.
+The collapse came during the afternoon; by eventide he was not my
+Gordon any more, his mind wandering far, voicing itself in strange
+plaint and heart-breaking appeal, the name of his absent Harold
+sounding through it all in pitiful refrain.
+
+I don't think the physician I called in haste that day knew anything
+about the skeleton closet in our home--it is wonderful how soon people
+forget, even those who know you best--but he located the hidden wound
+with wonderful acuteness.  "It's an utter collapse," he said; "what
+might be called a severe form of nervous breakdown--it generally occurs
+with people of strong emotional temperament.  Has your husband had any
+great shock?--or has he been carrying any specially heavy burden,
+probably for months?"
+
+I told him as much as I thought was necessary.
+
+"Just what I surmised," he said; "he's suffering from what the German
+physicians call 'the sad heart'--and all this derangement is due to the
+sympathy between the brain and the nerves.  Highly-strung organism, you
+see--intense emotional nature, that's evident; all this disturbance is
+a result of tension--the strain was simply too much for him.  But he'll
+recover all right--only it will take time, time and rest."
+
+A consultation followed soon; and the result of it all was that Gordon
+was to be removed to other scenes just as early as he would be able to
+travel.  I watched by him night and day, and soon the first storm of
+emotion was succeeded by a deep and silent calm that I found almost
+harder to be borne than the other.  He would sit by the hour poring
+over Harold's old school books, or gazing at some boyish photographs of
+the wanderer, or holding his cricket bat or butterfly net lovingly in
+his hands.  Sometimes he spoke of him, but not often.  When I told him
+we were going away for a little holiday he consented readily enough.
+
+"Where shall we go, Gordon?" I asked him, with but little hope that he
+would choose.
+
+"We'll go to Old Point Comfort," he answered unhesitatingly; "that's
+where we went before."
+
+I had to turn away.  For there came before me, with a flash of memory,
+the days to which I knew my husband's words referred.  Old Point
+Comfort, of dear and blessed memory!--thither had we turned our steps
+the night of our wedding day, going forth by the moonlit bay on our
+love-bright journey, the future years, with all the thorny paths that
+awaited us, veiled in the mist of happiness that arose from our singing
+hearts.  Ah me!  I could see again the unseamed face, the hair
+untouched by time, the swimming eyes of love, when my lover was still
+young and joyous, unworn with toil and care.
+
+"That's where we'll go," I answered; "we'll go to Old Point, Gordon."
+
+The arrangements for our journey were soon complete.  I do not think,
+even were it possible, that I would willingly forego all the
+discipline--and the blessing--that our years of poverty had brought me;
+but now I blessed the providence that had made it possible for me to
+take Gordon away like this.  Money was not lacking now--thanks to
+grandfather and that blessed mine--and I joyed over it as men rejoice
+in harvest or as robbers that divide the spoil.
+
+The evening before the very day we were to start, something occurred
+which wrung my heart as nothing, not even the loss of Harold, had ever
+done before.  I had been compelled to leave Gordon for a little while,
+some detail of preparation demanding my attention.  Returning to the
+study, our usual resort, I found it empty; and my heart chilled with
+fear.
+
+"Come, Helen," I suddenly heard Gordon's voice crying from without;
+"oh, Helen, come, come quick."  There was a strange note of excitement,
+even of rapture, in the voice that called me.
+
+Hatless, coatless, I rushed out into the frosty night.  And just across
+the way, in a large adjoining yard, I could see Gordon hurrying fast
+toward a little pond in the distance.  Sometimes he looked back and
+called me, then hurried on again, the strange exultation still sounding
+in his voice.  When I overtook him, he was clasping in his arms a
+wondering boy, a solitary skater on the frozen pond.
+
+"It's our boy, mother--oh, Helen, he's come at last.  It's Harold,
+mother"--and I noticed in the failing light that the lad was actually
+about Harold's size and form.  "I knew you'd come back, Harold," he
+cried as he held the youth to his bosom; "oh, my son, I knew you'd
+come--but what made you stay away so long?  And are you cold,
+Harold?--I've been so afraid you might be cold."  Then he held the
+startled boy out before him, his eyes lingering with pitiful intentness
+on the face he held upturned to his own.  "You've grown some," he said
+fondly, "but you're my own Harold yet--come, come on home now with me
+and mother.  Your bed's all ready for you, Harold; and Dorothy will be
+so glad--she's lonely, she's lonely for you, Harold."
+
+I stood transfixed and mute with grief.  Then the lad made some reply,
+I know not what.  But he broke the awful silence with a word--and
+Gordon's hands fell to his side like lead.  He stood a moment under the
+trembling stars, then stooped and gazed long into the face that had
+filled his soul with fleeting rapture.  Slowly he turned, looked a
+moment upward at the wintry sky, then silently moved towards me.
+
+"It isn't Harold," he said after a long pause, his eyes searching my
+face with unutterable yearning; "it's somebody else's boy--let us go
+home again," as we started back hand in hand.  The clock in an
+adjoining steeple struck the hour as we went our way; and its knell is
+with me yet.
+
+
+The next day saw us off upon our southward journey, Dorothy and Gordon
+and I.  The doctor had filled me with high hope; the change of air, and
+especially of scene, he said, were almost sure to do great things for
+my dear one.  And the very features that alarmed me most were those by
+which he seemed to be reassured.  The very acuteness of the malady, he
+said, was its most hopeful sign.  I have often thought of this since
+and applied it to many things other than bodily infirmities; the acute
+is the transient, let all sufferers bear in mind, and all who think
+life's battle hard.
+
+We arrived at Old Point in the morning, and the balmy air and genial
+skies seemed to help Gordon from the first.  Oh, sweet Southern air and
+sweeter Southern skies! how unspeakably dear to me I knew not till I
+thus returned after all the maze of years.  It was so delicious to hear
+again the soft Southern accent, to catch the liquid voices of the
+negroes, to breathe in the fragrance of the flowers that bloom in our
+dear Southland even in November.
+
+I remembered--what woman would forget?--the very room that had been
+ours when we were there in that same hotel on our bridal tour so long
+ago, the dearest little room, with a tiny balcony that looked out upon
+the ocean.  And I arranged that we should have it now--I would take no
+other.  Not a word did I say to Gordon.  But the first night we were
+there, after Dorothy had been safely stored away, I was sitting beside
+him, looking out over the moonlit harbour.  The night was hushed, the
+ocean calm; voices of darkey stevedores floated softly up to us as they
+moved hither and thither with their creaking wheelbarrows on the wharf.
+
+Suddenly Gordon turned his face full on mine in the moonlight.
+"Helen," he began huskily, "do you know what room this is, Helen?"
+
+I yielded to his arms as he slowly drew me within their shelter; "it's
+where we were before--when you were my bride, my lovely, lovely bride,"
+he said softly; "did you know it, Helen?"
+
+I nodded, smiling up to his bending face.  "Yes, I knew it, darling," I
+said; "that's why I chose it, Gordon."
+
+I know not why it was--I suppose no one could explain it--but the dawn
+came to us, and the darkness rolled away, in that blessed hour.  Tears
+came at last to Gordon; slowly at first; then in copious flow; then in
+a gush of feeling that wrung his whole form till it shook and sobbed
+like the frame of a little child.  Passionately he held me, his kisses
+falling on my lips while he murmured such words of love as the days of
+courtship had never heard.
+
+"It was like this before," he cried, pointing to the radiant sea; "the
+moon shone on it, just like this.  And we were so happy then,
+darling--we didn't know of the long years, with their care and sorrow,
+that stretched before us.  And you've been so good, Helen, so true and
+faithful--and so brave; whatever I've done, or been, I owe to you, my
+darling," and through all the gust of passion his voice had a
+naturalness, his eye a new-found calm, that told me the long dark night
+was past.
+
+"We were so happy then, weren't we, dear?" he said again after a little
+stillness.
+
+"I'm happier now," I answered, nestling in.
+
+"Why?" he exclaimed.  Then, suddenly discerning: "I know why--it's
+because we have the children now.  Isn't that why, Helen--isn't it
+Dorothy and Harold?"
+
+I told him Yes; and the fancy, if it can so be called, seemed to help
+and comfort him.  "Yes," he said musingly, "it's wonderful, isn't it,
+how we could have been happy then at all--when we didn't have them.
+But God gave them to us, didn't He, Helen?"
+
+"Yes," I murmured, my face hidden; "yes, God gave them."
+
+"And they're still His to give," he went on, a great peace in his voice
+such as it thrilled my soul to feel; "they're still His to give.  And I
+know--I'm almost sure--that He'll give us Harold back again.  Something
+tells me that it's coming near; I knew it when I looked out on the
+water--when the dark fled before the light that flooded it.  Don't you
+think so, my darling?"
+
+I forget just what my answer was; but we sat long, soothing and
+comforting each other, drinking deep from Memory's spring.  By and by
+Gordon fell asleep with his head resting on my arm, the moonlight still
+playing on the pure and lovely features as we sat by the open window.
+I brooded above him, thanking God for the change I could see upon the
+care-worn face.  The tide had turned, the reaction had come at last,
+the strife of battle seemed spent and gone.  All night long he slept
+the sleep of a little child; the morning found him bright and tranquil,
+and his first waking word was to say that he was well.
+
+For a couple of weeks, or perhaps a little longer we lingered on in our
+quiet retreat, every hour blissful with its evidence of returning
+strength.  Gordon spoke often of Harold, but always now with a sweet
+trustfulness that was beautiful to see; I really believe God made him
+well by touching his spirit with the calm of a childlike faith.  It was
+a miracle, I have never ceased to think, let the critics say what they
+will.  And as his strength came back his heart began to turn wistfully
+towards his work; I really don't believe any one ever knew how much he
+loved St. Andrew's, and had loved it all through the years.
+
+I protested against his returning, but in vain.  So it was all arranged
+that we were to start home on the following Monday.  The evening
+before, Gordon preached for a clergyman whose acquaintance he had
+formed, the minister of a little Methodist church not far away.  I was
+there, of course; and the sermon was one of the noblest I ever heard
+Gordon give.  It was from the words: "Casting all your care upon Him,"
+and I know every listener felt that the message was heaven-born.
+
+After the service was finished I was going down the aisle alone, when
+suddenly I heard some one pronounce my name.
+
+"Miss Helen!" said the voice, and bygone years rolled back upon me at
+the tone.
+
+I swung around, wildly excited.  It was a voice from home.  "Mr.
+Slocum!" I cried, so loud that everybody stood still and looked at me;
+"Frank Slocum!--Oh, Frank!" and I stood gasping in the aisle.  It was
+one of the friends of my early girlhood--the same who had been my
+escort to the ball that far departed night when we had first discussed
+the Presbytery, and the attic guest it was to bring us.
+
+"I wa'n't right sure," he began, rosy as the dawn; "but some one told
+me the preacher was Mr. Laird--then I knew you were Mrs. Laird."
+
+"Oh, Frank!" I cried, "please call me Helen," for the music of it was
+refreshing; "come away--come, and go home with me and Gordon."
+
+I believe Gordon enjoyed that evening with Frank quite as much as I,
+which is saying a good deal.  He said afterwards that I reminded him of
+a child running hither and thither through a flower-strewn glade,
+plucking whatever her hands could reach.  Thus did I gather news from
+Frank.  My questions rained in on him from every point of the compass,
+leaping from one subject to another like a peewee on the shore.
+(That's a kind of witches' dance in metaphors, I know, but they all
+mean the same thing anyhow.)  I cross-questioned Frank about everything
+and everybody, while Gordon sat listening with an amused expression on
+his face.  Particularly did I put him through his facings about my old
+schoolgirl friends.  The first question, without exception, was as to
+how many children they had--till this became so chronic that Frank
+would begin with this himself, not waiting to be asked.  It saddened me
+some to learn that several of them had twice as many as I.  One old
+friend, Sadie Henderson, had exactly three times as many--but two of
+them came at once, so that they didn't really count.  Others, moreover,
+had none at all, which brought Gordon and me pretty well up on the
+average.
+
+Frank had little to say about Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes except that
+they were getting older, which I would have surmised myself.  Besides,
+Frank had a sensitive nature; and I suppose he remembered the stormy
+scene when Gordon left my uncle's house.  I fancied, in a woman's
+instinctive way, that there was something he wanted to say to me alone.
+And I was right enough.  For when I walked with him as far as the hotel
+piazza, while we were gazing out over the shimmering sea Frank told me
+something that proved to be a word of destiny.
+
+"You all are going back by New York, you said?" he began, looking up
+significantly.  The idiom sounded sweet--_you all_--how long since I
+had heard that brace of words before!
+
+"Yes," I answered; "why?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you something interesting; I didn't care to say it
+before your husband, for fear it might affect his plans--I know how
+matters stand between him and your uncle, you know--but I think you
+ought to be told.  Your uncle's in New York."
+
+"What?" I gasped, and I felt the colour leave my cheek; "uncle's
+what?--he's where?"
+
+"He's in New York," Frank repeated calmly.  "I've just come from
+there--we were staying at the same hotel."
+
+"And Aunt Agnes?" I asked swiftly, my eyes fixed on him in the gloom.
+
+"No, Mrs. Lundy's at home--your uncle went up on some business, I
+believe.  Mighty successful too, as far as I could judge," Frank added.
+
+I cared nothing for this.  "What hotel, Frank?" I demanded eagerly;
+"tell me the hotel."
+
+"The St. Denis--opposite Grace Church, you know."
+
+Little more was said and I soon bade Frank farewell.  Then I walked
+slowly back to Gordon, trying to compose myself, struggling to subject
+my impulse to my judgment.  But it was of no use.  My heart was the
+heart of childhood once again; all I knew was this, that a few hours
+would bring us to New York, that we had intended going there
+anyhow--and that my uncle was within reach of one who had never ceased
+to love him.
+
+I paused a moment before I opened the door and went in where Gordon was
+still sitting, gazing out on the ever fascinating scene.
+
+"Well, dear, did you pump him dry?" he asked jauntily as I entered.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," and now I was on his knee (woman's throne of power) with
+his face between my hands; "oh, Gordon, don't say No.  Don't,
+Gordon--won't you do this for me, this, that I'm going to ask?"
+
+Soon I had poured out the whole story to him.  I noticed his brow
+darken a little at first, and the quivering lip told how much I had
+asked of him.
+
+But Gordon was all gold through and through; he always was, my Gordon
+was, from that first hour when my eyes fell upon his face till now; and
+the love of this later day, although I suppose folks call us old,
+exceeds that early ardour as the noontide mocks the dawn.
+
+"Yes, my wife," he said, stroking my hair and looking with almost
+pitying fondness on my face; "yes, brave heart and true--you were his
+before you were mine.  And we'll go, Helen--we'll both go."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_THE HOUR OF HEALING_
+
+The mighty city seemed hushed as I made my way along the corridor of
+the old hotel.  But I suppose the hush was from my heart.
+
+"You'll wait here, will you, ma'am?" and the bellboy opened the door of
+the retired little parlour as he spoke.  "I'll bring Mr. Lundy in a
+minute.  Yes, I think he's in, ma'am; his room's on this floor.  Don't
+you want me to take him your card?"
+
+"No," I answered; "just tell him a lady wants to see him here--an old
+friend of his."
+
+The boy disappeared along the shadowy hall.  I had but a few minutes to
+wait.  "This here's the door, sir," I heard the boy direct; and then I
+could catch the shuffling step, not yet forgotten, as a tall and bended
+form came slowly into the room.  Keen and curious was the glance that
+came from the enquiring eyes, swiftly searching amid the failing light.
+
+I knew him.  Only a glance I had, but it was enough to revive the
+memories of girlhood, to carry me back over all the waste of years, to
+recall with lightning speed the love and laughter of the days that were
+no more.  My heart leaped within me as I saw the change that time had
+made.  Uncle was an old man now, and the years had bowed the erect and
+stalwart frame; snowy white was the hair that had been but streaked
+with gray when I saw it last; more serious than of old, but flashing
+the same kindling light, the same lofty pride, were the kindly eyes
+whose glow no years could quench or dim.
+
+"Oh, uncle!" I sobbed, the storm breaking as in a moment; "oh, uncle!
+Uncle dear, it's me--it's your little girl--it's Helen."
+
+He had started back as I moved towards him.  But my voice arrested him,
+that wondrous feature that changes not with changing years.  A moment
+he stood, as though he had heard the trump of doom itself.  Then, like
+an aspen, from head to foot he trembled--and the fear flashed through
+my mind that I had acted with cruel haste.
+
+But the great cry which broke from him--no articulate word--rang with
+such fullness of joy and strength as to dispel my every fear.  A moment
+later I was in his arms.  He bore me to the window, those arms as
+strong as in other days, smoothing back my hair as he leaned over and
+peered into my face.
+
+"Oh, God!" the words coming like a prayer; "it's Helen--she's come
+back.  But it's been so long--and your hair's getting gray, Helen--and
+you look older than when you went away."
+
+I smiled, gazing up at him in sweet content.  "Count the years, uncle."
+
+"The years!" he broke out with the old fiery intenseness; "count the
+years--haven't I counted them?--and the days, and the hours--waiting,
+always waiting.  Oh, Helen, it's been long--it's been so long.  But
+what could I do?--what could any gentleman have done, when I passed my
+word that----  If your husband----"
+
+I laid my finger on his lips; then leaned up and kissed them.  And our
+speech flowed back, half of it almost incoherent, into the sweeter
+channels that laved the happy past in which we were both content to
+dwell.  Much of it was of my mother, my sainted mother, for whom life's
+conflict had so long been over--and uncle's tears were mingled with my
+own.
+
+"There's only one thing I reproach you for now, Helen," the gentle
+voice began, when the dusk had deepened into dark; "one thing you
+should have done--and that would have made our happiness complete."
+
+"What's that, uncle?" I asked, greatly wondering.
+
+"You should have brought Gordon with you--the only difference there
+was, was with him, you know.  Surely he doesn't think I'm one of those
+old vipers that carries things till death?" his voice less steady than
+before.
+
+"He's here," I said softly; "he's down-stairs."
+
+Uncle sprang to his feet as if the years had withheld their enfeebling
+hand.  "Bring him up--send for him at once," he ordered, as though
+commanding a regiment of soldiers.  "Ring the bell--where's that
+boy?--are the servants all asleep?  These rascally dogs they've got in
+the North--I wouldn't give Moses or any good nigger for a bushel of
+them.  And are your children--is the little girl with him now?"
+
+His question cut me like a knife.  For I had kept back part of our
+life's story, the bitter part, when uncle had enquired about our
+children.  We only brought one of them, I had said--but hoped he might
+see Harold later on.  Which was true enough, so true, alas!
+
+"I don't need you," uncle said abruptly as a servant's head appeared at
+the door.  "I'll go to him," he announced to me--"I'll go to Gordon.  I
+hope I don't forget what's becoming in a Southern gentleman--besides,
+he's come far enough.  You wait here--I'd know him in a thousand,
+unless he's enough sight plainer than he used to be.  Always did have a
+hankerin' for him, I believe, like a nigger for a watermelon.  You wait
+here, Helen," and he made his way, straightening himself with all the
+old-time dignity, upon his courtly errand.
+
+
+It was the following evening, the evening of a day that had been filled
+with unmixed gladness to me and Gordon.  If it had not been for that
+one skeleton closet--which I need not name--the whole house of life
+would have been one big banqueting hall to his heart and mine.  More
+than once, through that happy day, I noticed Gordon's laughter die away
+in silence and the brightness leave his eye as there evidently floated
+before him the vision of the one absent face.  Indeed, he said as much
+to me, that all the gladness only threw into darker contrast the
+abiding cloud that was always in our sky.
+
+But uncle had been so lovely to us both this day; and we had just
+finished dinner at some resort he had discovered where Southern dishes,
+new and old, were to be had in all their glory.  We were all seated now
+in uncle's room; and the dear old man was directing all his powers of
+persuasion upon my husband.
+
+"It's the purest play I ever saw in my life," he urged, one hand
+holding Gordon by the knee; "it's as good as a sermon.  I've heard
+heaps o' sermons that didn't do me as much good as 'The Old Homestead,'
+I tell you."
+
+"I was never at the theatre in my life," my husband made reply, "except
+twice I went to see Irving--and I don't altogether believe in it."
+
+"This is far better'n Irving," uncle urged; "and you'll preach better
+after it."
+
+"I don't feel much in the mood for theatres," Gordon responded; "my
+days for merriment are past, I fear," which came with a smile that
+showed he didn't quite believe it.
+
+"That's the very time to go," insisted uncle; "that's when you want to
+get the cobwebs blown out of you--and this'll do it all right."
+
+"I'll leave it to Helen," Gordon suddenly exclaimed; "if she wants to
+go, I'll give in."
+
+Five minutes before, I can frankly say, I had hoped Gordon would carry
+his point.  The theatre, that particular night, had no charm for me.
+Yet now that Gordon had left the matter in my hands, some mysterious
+impulse settled my resolve at once.  Nobody need tell me that women,
+true women, live far from the unseen.  For my resolve was taken on the
+instant, so suddenly and confidently that it amazed myself.
+
+"We'll go," I said quietly.  "The play sounds good; I'm sure I've heard
+of it before--and I want to see it, Gordon."
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later we were seated five or six rows from
+the footlights, watching the haymakers gathered about the moss-grown
+bucket that gives its charm to the opening scene of "The Old
+Homestead."  But the play had not proceeded far before I began to
+regret bitterly that we had not stayed away.  When it dawned on me that
+the plot centred about an absent boy, a son for whom a father sought in
+vain, I knew that Gordon's Gethsemane was deepened by every word and
+act.  This particular kind of anguish was realistic enough to us both,
+without any representation so vivid.  Yet we had to sit there, uncle
+alternately laughing and weeping at our side, and witness the rehearsal
+of all we knew so well.  I was sitting beside Gordon; and I covertly
+got a hold of his hand, pressing it silently to let him know my heart
+was aching too.  I found myself, almost before I knew it, leaning
+forward in an agony of interest and suspense as the great emotions of a
+parent's love and loneliness were set forth in terrible reality.  It
+was as if Gordon's heart and mine were both laid bare that night; and I
+found myself wondering if all this meant to any others in that crowded
+throng what it meant to us.
+
+Uncle was enraptured at our fixity; he knew not the source of our
+deadly interest.  "Didn't I tell you?" he whispered to Gordon as the
+tension came near its height; "ever see anything like that before?
+Isn't that true to life, eh?"
+
+Gordon never spoke, his eyes looking far beyond, as fixed as though set
+on death itself.
+
+"Isn't that true to life?" uncle repeated, accustomed to being answered.
+
+"Yes, oh, God, yes--yes, it's true," I heard poor Gordon falter as he
+bowed forward and covered his face with his hands.  Uncle, dumb with
+wonder now, uttered never a word.  I prayed for strength.
+
+The tide ebbed and flowed, as is the way in plays, laughter and tears
+following each other in quick succession.  A wave of mirth--about the
+pillar box incident, I think, when the old man imagines the collector
+is robbing the mails--had just overswept the audience when Gordon
+whispered to me that he could stand it no longer.
+
+"Don't go yet, Gordon," I whispered; "I think he's going to find him,"
+and I saw his face white with the pallor of the dead.
+
+He made no reply; but, clutching his hat, he rose to go, swaying
+unsteadily where he stood.
+
+I began reaching for my wraps and was just rising to follow.  He paused
+to wait for me, holding out his hand, I think--of this I am not sure.
+But just before we turned to go, my eyes were cast in one farewell
+glance upon the stage.  My head reeled; my heart stood still; my lips
+clave together, parched and dry.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I cried, bleating, "look, Gordon, look," swimming towards
+him even as I pointed at the stage.
+
+His towering figure turned where he stood; and his burning eyes, aglow
+with the passion that was rending him, leaped to where I still pointed
+with outstretched hand.  Then I straightened myself too, as one might
+gather his soul for the Judgment Day, and joined my gaze with his.  The
+eyes of all in the house were upon us, I suppose--but I shall never
+know.  We stood together, oblivious to all except the destiny of weal
+or woe that waited us, looking, both looking, as the eye of the Eternal
+itself might look.  We could not--we dared not--be sure, lest we might
+court the bitterness of death.  The light was not bright enough, or
+true enough--for us to stake our souls.  We feared exceedingly; and for
+each other; wherefore neither spoke any word.
+
+The scene was the great Broadway scene, where the anguished father
+finds his son at last.  And the tattered youth upon whom that
+father--that acting father--gazed, on him our eyes were set in dreadful
+silence, in questioning that involved our souls.  We could not--we
+dared not--know; but suddenly the old man on the stage--oh! the
+perjured wastery of simulated love like that--broke forth with a wild
+outcry of love and rapture as he leaped towards the soiled and wasted
+prodigal before him.
+
+And then--and then--mingling with the father's chant, there came from
+the bowed and broken wanderer one single note; a little cry, a muffled
+plaint of penitence and hope.  It was such a little sound, subdued and
+faltering as became a broken heart, and it was almost lost in the
+father's louder strain--but I heard it, and my soul laid hold of God.
+Only a stifled cry--but it was the same I had heard when I first came
+out of the valley and my new-born baby boy lay helpless at my breast;
+the same I had heard a thousand times when he was hurt or wronged and
+toddled in to me with the boyish story of his grief; the same I had
+heard when he came home that night and told me of his sin; the same I
+had heard when he bent above his sleeping sister and kissed her a long
+farewell.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," I said, fainting, "it's Harold--it's our Harold!"
+
+He knew it too.  And he left me where I was, half conscious in uncle's
+arms.  I see it all again, dismantled though I was, as in a dream.  The
+curtain dropped just as uncle's arm received me, as Gordon glided
+towards the narrow half-hidden passageway leading to the stage.  Slowly
+it fell, right down close to the floor, shutting out the last fragment
+of the vision that had flooded our hearts with heaven.  Ah, me! no one
+there--not even uncle--knew that for us life's curtain had really
+risen, the play, the wonderful play of life, only just begun.
+
+The orchestra had softly started some subdued and sympathetic air; I
+knew not, nor yet do know, what strain it was--but it fell on my
+reviving heart with the sweetness of such music as angels make--and my
+eyes flew after Gordon as he was swallowed up of the shadowy passageway
+that led back to that mysterious region where actors are men and women,
+players now no more.  I think somebody, some hireling who knew not what
+he did, tried to turn Gordon from his course--as well have tried to
+stop Niagara.  I fancy I caught a glimpse of him as he swept the
+intruder by--his eye was flashing, fearful in its purpose of love and
+power, as though he were asserting his claim to life itself.
+
+He never stopped--this was described to me afterwards--till he stood
+beside the pair of actors, the old man and the young, already repairing
+to the dressing-room behind.  And the old man's face, so they told me,
+was a study to behold as he was swiftly brushed aside, dispossessed,
+the unreality swallowed up of Life as Gordon took the tattered form
+into the arms that long emptiness had clothed with almost savage
+strength.
+
+"Oh, my son!  Oh, Harold, my son, my son!" was Gordon's low cry that
+all about could hear; for the stillness of the grave was on every
+heart.  "Come, come, we'll go to mother," came a moment later as he
+turned and tried to lead Harold gently away.
+
+I do not know all the son said to the father.  But Gordon told me after
+how Harold clung to him as though he were hiding for his life, speaking
+no word, but burying his face as though none must see the shame--or the
+holy gladness; and in a minute or two, though I know not how long it
+was, some one in authority said that the play must go on, that the
+audience would be impatient and indignant.
+
+"Then come, my son," said Gordon; "get your clothes on, Harold, and
+we'll go--your mother, your mother knows it's you," his face radiant, I
+ween, as it turned upon his boy.
+
+But Harold wouldn't--the play must be finished, he said, and he must
+take his part.  Harold's face was resolute, his father said, his words
+full of determination, when he avowed his purpose to stay till his work
+was done.  And really--it was one of the most amusing sides of my
+husband's character I ever saw--when Gordon told me this his face
+fairly shone with pride.  "The lad wouldn't forsake his duty," he said,
+as proudly as if Harold had been a foreign missionary instead of a
+play-actor; it was too funny to hear Gordon, with the views I knew him
+to hold about the theatre, belauding Harold because he wouldn't leave
+his post even at such a time as that.
+
+So his father came back and resumed his place beside me.  No word
+escaped his lips, but his eyes spoke the language of Everlasting Life
+as they were fixed a moment on my own.  Uncle gazed at him--I suppose
+everybody did--but he knew that question or answer had no place in an
+hour such as this.  And the curtain rolled up again--ah, me! how
+different now--and my hand was once more in Gordon's; but now I could
+feel the strain of gratitude and gladness that his happy heart was
+chanting.  Our eyes were fixed on Harold only; I heard his voice amid
+that closing revelry--and my wild heart leaped in my bosom as though my
+son were born to me anew.
+
+
+We were home at last.  In the hotel, I mean, in Gordon's room and
+mine--for uncle had gone to rest.  Only a little tiny bit of a room it
+was--but it was home; for we had Harold--and Dorothy was asleep in an
+adjoining room.
+
+Gordon went out for a little.  He said he wanted to enquire about
+trains--but I knew why he left us alone together.  Gordon was an
+eloquent minister--but I was Harold's mother.  And there are queens and
+priestesses, as well as kings and priests, unto God.  Which Gordon knew.
+
+It was while he and I were still alone with each other that Harold
+broke out with bitter plaint of penitence, so full of gusty sorrow, of
+self-reproach, of broken vows and purposes.  I shall not, must not,
+write it down.  It was all holy to me, and shall ever be; for the
+breath of spring was in it, and I knew then that God had brought him
+back, all back, the broken heart sick of the sin and shame that he now
+hated and deplored.  My son was alive again, I knew in that moment;
+lost had he been indeed--but God had kept aglow his memory of the
+Home-light that never had gone out.
+
+"I couldn't tell this to anybody else," the faltering voice said as his
+face was hidden on my bosom--"not even to father--what I'm going to
+tell you now.  But I'm going to----"
+
+"Tell it to God, my son," and I kissed the quivering lips.
+
+Gordon came back just after that.  I think he must have known our souls
+had come close to each other and to Him.  For a great peace was on his
+face--and yet it shone with a kind of human happiness that I thought
+was truly spiritual.  He simply didn't seem to think there was anything
+that needed reproach, or explanation, or forgiveness.  He talked with
+Harold about his old friends, his old games, his old pursuits; and
+about what we would do, and see, before we returned to Hertford.  Then
+pretty soon he said it was time we were all in bed, and, in the most
+natural way, that we would have worship before we separated.  So he
+took the Bible.  But, before he opened it, he started one of the old
+familiar psalms, just as we had always done at home.
+
+"We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," he said, with something
+of grandeur in his manner that reminded me of Harold's grandfather; for
+that is one of the sublimities of the Scottish race.  I have heard both
+Gordon and his father declare that something could be found in the
+psalms to suit every occasion, no matter what.  But I wondered what
+could express the emotion of such a time as this.  "We'll sing the one
+hundred and twenty-sixth," Gordon repeated, already pitching the key to
+the "grave sweet melody" of a tune that bore the happy name of St.
+Andrew's.  And we sat in silence as he sang
+
+  "When Zion's bondage God turned back
+    As men that dreamed were we;
+  Then filled with laughter was our mouth
+    Our tongue with melody."
+
+
+Harold's head was bowed; my eyes were fixed on Gordon.  For my heart
+was busy with the thrilling memory of that long distant night when I
+first had heard the power of that earnest voice, first learned the
+grandeur of these mighty songs.  Gordon seemed unconscious of our
+presence.  His eyes were lifted up, beyond the things of time: he was
+like one lost among the hills, transported by their grandeur.
+Something more than human ecstasy throbbed through his voice when he
+sang the verse:
+
+  "As streams of water in the south
+    Our bondage, Lord, recall;
+  Who sow in tears, a reaping time
+    Of joy enjoy they shall."
+
+Then he read some selection from the Scriptures.  It was very short;
+and he read it slowly, his eyes never lifted from the page.  When he
+prayed, he talked with God--all I can remember was the way he said "Our
+Father."
+
+
+It was long after midnight when he and I went to our rest--we sat
+talking for hours and hours, and Harold was asleep in the room next to
+ours.  Just before we put out our light Gordon suddenly turned to me,
+and his face was as youthful as when I saw it first.
+
+"Helen, let us go and tuck Harold in--so he won't be cold."
+
+I smiled, for I couldn't but remember Harold's age, but I threw a
+wrapper about me and Gordon and I went in together.  We tucked him in,
+one on either side; I don't know whether Harold knew or not, but he
+played the part of childhood once again--when we kissed him good-night
+he turned a little in his sleep and smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_EDEN IN THE ATTIC_
+
+I sometimes wonder what the other guests thought of our behaviour at
+breakfast the next morning.  Uncle was simply ridiculously happy, even
+boisterously so.  And he wouldn't hear to any dissent from the project
+that possessed his mind.  We must all go South with him, and that was
+the end of it.  He and Aunt Agnes had never had a difference in all
+their married life, he said, but the trouble would begin right there if
+he went back without us!  And he settled the whole thing an hour later
+by suddenly appearing, after a very mysterious absence, and flaunting
+in our faces the tickets for the entire party.  They were taken via the
+Old Dominion Line; and the little sea voyage would be the very thing
+for all of us,--and Harold had assured him that a release from his
+company could be easily arranged.  So Gordon left it to me again--and I
+left it to Harold, and Harold elected to see his mother's old Virginia
+home.  Dorothy lent loud approval.
+
+
+Thirty-six hours later we were in the dear old Southern town, driving
+from the old familiar station along the old familiar street.  My heart
+was full; its burden was partly sadness, altogether song.
+
+"Stop here," Gordon suddenly said to the driver as we turned on to a
+street neither of us was likely to forget.  "Come, Helen," as he held
+out his hand to help me from my seat.
+
+I knew.  It was under that very elm, just opposite the church, I had
+first come face to face with love--even if I did have a pitcher in my
+hand, _going for the cream_.
+
+"Drive on," said Gordon; "we'll join you later," and the carriage
+rolled away.
+
+We followed, slowly; sometimes looking up into the deep shade of the
+bending elms, sometimes into each other's faces; with much of speech we
+walked--of silence, sweeter silence, more.
+
+Soon a turn in the road brought us in full view of uncle's house.
+There it stood, ivy-clad, the same stately, frowning structure, looking
+forth at us as calmly as though we had gone away but yesterday.  There
+was the magnolia tree beside the steps of stone, not now in bloom but
+still spreading forth in umbrageous beauty.  And there, just beyond,
+flowing still, its copious stream unfailing, rolled the shining river;
+rolling on, as time rolls on, unhasting, unresting, bearing all its
+burdens in silence to the sea.  The years had passed and fled, yet the
+selfsame wavelets could be seen--oh, parable of Time!  And the bridge
+was there; repaired and strengthened some, yet the same bridge it was
+on which I had seen the love-lorn pair seek the shelter of the dark.
+And I felt a shudder thrill my frame as I descried the very pier that
+had been the scene of the tragedy but for which Gordon had never made
+his noble protest; but for which, our long years of exile had never
+been.  I looked away.
+
+Aunt Agnes was at the door as we climbed the steps of stone.  She led
+me in and closed it tight before she told me, with love's speech of
+silentness, all the joy of welcome that was in her heart.  She was
+thinking, and I was thinking, of the absent one--oh! why these
+ever-absent ones?--whose face was now withdrawn forever.  I roamed the
+hall; I wandered about the broad porch; I drank my fill of the library,
+dearest of them all--my mother's face met me at every turn.  And I
+wondered, with passionate hope that it might be so, if she knew that
+her child had returned to the scene of girlhood days once more; if she
+knew how laden with the spoils of time I came, rich in the harvest that
+love and sorrow give, anointed by the holy hand of suffering, by life's
+fleeting vanities beguiled no more.
+
+"Show Harold through the house, Helen," uncle said to me when supper
+was over and the first tumult had subsided; "let him see the old place
+from cellar to attic.  It will be his some day, I reckon," and his tone
+and glance left no doubt as to what he meant.
+
+I did as he directed, partly.  All but the attic.  Not yet must any
+enter there but me.  I soon restored Harold to the merry circle--and
+then my steps turned, almost reverently, towards that upper room.  It
+did not take me long, what I had to do, for love's task is soon
+accomplished.  And I knew it would not be in vain--I knew that Gordon
+would not fail me.  Yet my heart beat fast as I turned at the attic
+door and looked back once more before I went down-stairs.  Everything
+was perfect--and the gentle breeze was ruffling the curtain of the tiny
+window.
+
+They were all in bed when Gordon and I betook ourselves to the room set
+apart for us.  It was just above the parlour, the largest and most
+imposing apartment in all that roomy house.  A large mahogany bed was
+planted, immovable, in the centre; hand-carving, richly wrought, made
+the ceiling and mantel things of beauty; oil-paintings hung upon the
+lofty wall; soft draperies bedecked the windows.
+
+We closed the door and Gordon looked about the splendid room.  I began
+unpacking a valise that lay upon the floor.
+
+Suddenly he came over and stood beside me.  One hand touched my
+shoulder and I looked up.
+
+"We're not going to sleep here," he said quietly.
+
+"Why?" I asked.  "Where?" although I knew, and my bounding heart
+bespoke my joy.
+
+"You know--come," with which he took up the valise and led the way
+aloft.
+
+The roof was low and I think Gordon really bowed his head a little as
+we passed within that attic door.  The same discarded articles, finding
+their limbo here, stood about the walls.  But the fire was crackling on
+the hearth; the coverings on the bed were snowy white; the silver
+toilet-set on the old bureau was the same I had laid there so
+stealthily years before.  And on the little table in the corner was a
+bowl of the choicest roses, their fragrance floating through the room.
+
+I looked at Gordon.  Perhaps I was just a little disappointed that he
+did not speak.  His eyes rested on the fire, turned to the roses,
+lingering long.
+
+"That's the same fire," he said slowly.
+
+"Oh, Gordon," and I laughed; "how can you say that?"
+
+"The very same," he persisted; "it never has gone out.  And the roses
+too; they're the very same--they've never faded."
+
+"I thought you'd want to come here," I said, stupidly enough; but I
+knew not what else to say.  "You know, you said--long ago, when you
+first came here--you said you always loved an attic."
+
+"Yes," he said simply, his eyes fixed on me; "yes, I do."
+
+"Why?" I asked, though I knew it was such a foolish question.
+
+He stood a long time silent in the firelight, his eyes never moving
+from my face.  "Because it's nearest heaven," he answered low; "come,
+Helen"--and his arms were open wide.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+  By Robert E. Knowles
+
+  _The Attic Guest_
+
+  _The Web of Time_
+
+  _The Dawn at Shanty Bay_
+    Decorated and Illustrated by Griselda M. McClure.
+
+  _The Undertow_
+    A Tale of Both Sides of the Sea
+
+  _St. Cuthbert's_
+    A Parish Romance
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Attic Guest, by Robert E. Knowles
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56675 ***