THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER

Author of "The Heart of a Man, " etc. 

M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

CHICAGO--NEW YORK

Copyright 1916

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916. 

Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916. 

February, 1917. 

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER PAGE I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN 3 II THE CHOIR UNSEEN 35 III GLOW OF DAWN 64 IV THE ANSWER 103 V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE 137 VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD 174 VII THE INNER CITADEL 210 VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I? 243 IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD 277 X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID 311

THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

I

THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN

The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. Itwas undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arseneassured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind ofFrench that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers. 

Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that theBishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could notunderstand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheerycompanion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet ofAdirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft andthe road is uncertain. 

In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind andhad headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for abite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up thehalf-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country andthere were no roads. 

Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followedhim down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made andleaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only asteady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let thetough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road. 

Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off thesingle bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sittingall day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet bracedstiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. Butit was the only way that this trip could be made. 

The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in FrenchVillage on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He hadarranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had puthim back at that time. 

Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There wasno road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad milesto go. 

Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkierof his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly tothe sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacredessentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more orless in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break theirway through somehow. 

So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazingFrench upon Arsene. 

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He hadlearned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties. Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had goneto Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French ofanother kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as itwas written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent. 

He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, notbecause the children would understand, but because it would pleaseFather Ponfret and the parents. 

They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and theBishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admirationof Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:

"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"

The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank. 

While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully hisbulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he sawwhat had happened. 

The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail androlled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and thesled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled atthe bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through thesnow to help he feared that it was serious. 

Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head justclear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them inthe _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having hisbrains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally, move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with themas quietly as if he stood at their heads. 

They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence ofthe calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their owncraft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessonsthey had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay stilland waited for the voice to come and get them out of this. 

As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, heremembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himselfthat he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this littleFrench-Canadian storekeeper. 

The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him, and lunged for the ponies' heads. 

"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"

He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to theirfeet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were allsafe back on the hard under-footing of the trail. 

Arsene now looked around for the Bishop. 

"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"

The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from thetumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back upthe bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harnessand said ruefully:

"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust. "

He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble wasquite evident. 

"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"

"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sledlas' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief. "

"We must get on somehow, " said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of thelashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will holduntil we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace. We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Isit far?"

"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe. "The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out aclump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the whiteworld around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from amongthe trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle againstthe desolation of the hills. 

"I donno, " said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took uptheir tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' likeCanuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno. "

"Oh, yes; he will surely, " answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody wouldrefuse a bit of harness in a case like this. "

It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hiditself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off theroad where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way throughthe heavy snow to find the cabin door. 

It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that hadstood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it wasstill serviceable and tight, and it was a home. 

The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within. It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place. After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavywooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin. 

A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. Onthe hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave notthe slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legsplanted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. Hisnose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he darednot give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of frightbut seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room wherehe was looking. 

Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft, well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched outawkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been draggedunconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledgeand shone down full into the man's face. 

At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting theman's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down acrosshis chest. 

She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense thather whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was asthough her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted itsmessage to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compellingstrength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heavenand earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound. 

"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over andover. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn'twant you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It'snot never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why, he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"

For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening tothe pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listeningto the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fightingbitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and lifeto aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her lovedone down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of thevery clutches of the unknown. 

And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girlsaid. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoingevery word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swepthim along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayedfor the man to open his eyes. 

Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip andcrush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big, grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror. 

The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head, saying:

"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try. "

The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question whohe was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her armsjealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she wasafraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insistedgently and in the end she gave him place beside her. 

He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listenat the man's breast. 

Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for theknife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly. 

"It was just a little while ago, " she answered, in short, frightenedsentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Fatherhad been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinneddown under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and toldme where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it mustbe I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs andmade a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak. Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me, " she appealed. 

The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man'sjacket and shirt. 

"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get thestrength for all this? My driver is out on the road, " he continued, ashe worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help. "

The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at theman on the couch, went out into the snow. 

The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily. 

The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing thereto constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upperribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them werecaved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of themmust have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung onthat side. 

The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bledoutwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula. 

He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was alittle black ball of steel. 

While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, along tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever soslightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyesopened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishopthought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come backnaturally to a realisation of things. 

While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stoodholding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, RuthLansing came back into the room. 

Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and wasabout to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father'svoice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stoppedher. 

"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But Ialways knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time. "

The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years. 

The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heardthe tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told herthat her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly andso certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was anapparition that she could not think or reason herself out of herfright. 

The Bishop answered easily and quietly:

"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybodyremembered now. "

Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They staredfull at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in itsright place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog atthe fireplace. The man there was real!

Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell backgasping. 

The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to abetter position, saying:

"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken atrace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. Butyour girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctorsomewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is notso bad as it looks. " But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop ofblood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew thatit was as bad as the worst. 

The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from theBishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room. 

It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had ralliedquickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowdingdarkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their workfast. The time was short. 

Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called thegirl to him. 

Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when hermother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing hadhardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They hadgrown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsywords between them. 

As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question. 

But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning hadgiven him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravelywith herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look ofunderstanding and great mothering tenderness. 

Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it withhis eyes. Then he said:

"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life. But you won't be afraid. I know you won't. "

The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared nottrust herself to speak. 

"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for asign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life. And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take youon. 

"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, myRuth. "

The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep andlong into the glazing eyes. 

Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and lifealone. 

Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room. She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that thetime was short. 

In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwingone arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it. She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time forthat. 

The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocablechange had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering, protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and itsinfinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen fromher knees. 

As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:

"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and itdon't matter. 

"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before hegets here. 

"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut topieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there, because it was every man for himself. 

"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' madacross the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside mewhere I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wildhorse back into our lines. 

"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. Ilay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"

"I do, now, " said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah, and I never knew what--"

That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just afew months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Unionarmy. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of abattlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes beforeFort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. Hesaw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against theConfederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back intothe smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wanderedblindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking toa living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and givingwater; there hearing the confession of a Catholic. 

Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flatland. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back intothe marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. Theanimal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as hebent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse. Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding backand forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carriedhim. 

Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boywith a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of thelast charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling downsomehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled himacross the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his ownlines. 

Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-fiveyears. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, TomLansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloator been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given himlife. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given thatdaughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say. 

"I didn't know you then, " said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now, Chaplain, or what you are. 

"But, " he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'dhave taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would. "

"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to getit on to her?"

"I hope I would, " said the Bishop evenly. 

"I believe you would. That's what I think of you, " said Tom Lansing. 

"I went back South after the war, " he began again. "I stole my girl'smother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonelthat would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her uphere into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeksold. 

"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to. I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if Ilived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry somefightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her hearttryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fretherself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon bewantin' to know more. She's that kind. 

"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in townshavin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way shewants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp. 

"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother upinto this place!"

"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does, " said theBishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance. I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"

"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effortto raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets achance?"

"God will help me to do the best for her, " said the Bishop quietly. "Iam the Bishop of Alden. I can do something. "

With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, TomLansing's eyes turned to his daughter. 

Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head. 

To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smilingbravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holdingher light of cheering love for the soul out-bound. 

When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, sheleaned over and kissed her father full on the lips. 

Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night. 

While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young manand two women came into the room. 

They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbourswhom Arsene had brought. 

The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothingmore now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him. 

He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold, and asked him to find her. 

Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansingsince she was a baby, for they were the only children on LansingMountain. He knew where he would find her. 

Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where peoplehad to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once. 

"No, sir, " she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody tosend for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody everheard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father andmother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried. 

"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River. They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be onMonday, " she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have apreacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty heresings something. "

"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way, " said the Bishop slowly. "At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"

"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for thefirst time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed inthe first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, blackhair?"

"He had an old scar over his eye-brow. " The Bishop supplemented thedescription out of the memory of that day. 

"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow, "said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"

"He was dead when I came to him, " said the Bishop quietly, "with thestock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand. "

"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women donot say things easily. 

"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand. " She was a woman of hispeople. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could readthe years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark facewhich he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow. 

Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister. 

"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the WhiteHorse Chaplain?"

"The boys called me that, " said the Bishop. "Though it was only a namefor a day, " he added. 

"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe. "We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--theones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priestriding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see whenthey're fighting and dying. "

Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing bythe hand. 

The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over tothe fire. 

"I must go now, child, " he said. "To-morrow I must be in FrenchVillage. Monday I will be here again. 

"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"

The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, thennodded her head. 

"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do whathe wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what hewanted. 

"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything foryou. I have to go now. "

He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of thedead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made. 

Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back beforenoon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stampingin the snow. 

The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, frettingwith the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail. 

But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. Hetold him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence. 

Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl. She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. Butmore than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago. 

She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and askher own questions from life and the world. In the broad open spacebetween her eye-brows it was written that she would never takeanybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand toknow what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrowfall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way. The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way ishard and lonely. 

She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance toface life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did notpromise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers wasthe high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life isready to give. 

The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which hadsent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him howbest to keep that promise. 

And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village hehad gotten no farther than that. 

Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheetshad been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun lookingin through the west window picked out every bare thread of his servicecoat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slunginto the belt at his side. 

Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listeningto the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the highhills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew. But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonouslie-- How natural he looked!

He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her DaddyTom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would notspeak to his Ruth!

He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_

Who had ordered this? And _why?_

And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thingthey could think to say--upon their lips. 

Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte, the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together. 

Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make himunderstand and answer. 

She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner ofthe house her dog joined her and together they circled away from thehorse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had beenworking yesterday. 

She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright ofyesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came andslid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the capbetween her hands. 

So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coatand hood. 

"You better put these on, Ruth, " he said, as he dropped the coatacross her shoulder. "It's too cold here. "

The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up athim. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready tospeak to any one. 

He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over tohim. 

After a little he asked timidly:

"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend yourstock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stayhere. "

"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany schoolnext week. You said you were all ready. "

"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the twofarms for you. "

"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"

"I--I don't care anything about it any more, " he lied. "I told motherthis morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come andstay with her till Spring. "

"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraidinto his eyes. "And then?"

"Well, then, " he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'llbe old enough to marry me, " he hurried. "Your father, you know, healways wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded, awkwardly but subtly. 

"I know you don't want to talk about it now, " he went on hastily. "Butyou'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wantsyou, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it whenyou wasn't any higher than Prince here. "

"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad, " the girl answered levelly. "I'mglad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me forit. "

"Ruth! You know better than that!"

"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide itfrom me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back andsee what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in thehills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, howyou're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyerand go to Albany and maybe to Washington. "

"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay herewith you. "

The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, shehad almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say tothe White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop. 

Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them. 

"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my fatherthat he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the WhiteHorse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose tolook after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. Ithought it was only in books about Europe. "

"What did they say?"

"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and knowthings; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it wasno place for me in the hills. "

"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, toschool?" he guessed shrewdly. 

"I don't know, I suppose that was it, " said the girl slowly. "Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He hadtaught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills wasfull of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and seeand pick up. And to-day I don't care. "

She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, anddown the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were allshe had in the world. 

The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly. 

He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:

"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know. "

Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps itwas just the eternal surrender of woman. 

When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears, the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and runout into the night. 

He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white, desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untriedtroth. 

When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, andthe people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting cameand stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told himto expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy'sclean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. Theytold of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here wasnot a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his. 

"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills, " hebegan. "To a school, I suppose. "

"I made a promise to her father, " said the Bishop, "that I would tryto see that she got the chance that she will want in the world. "

"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring. "

The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far. 

"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully. 

"Twenty in April. "

"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been atschool?"

"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at theAcademy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week. "

"And you are giving it all up for Ruth, " said the Bishop incisively. "Does it hurt?"

The boy winced, but caught himself at once. 

"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth. "

"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering tomake a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes andwork yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you wouldbe man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believethat. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance, for her, for love. 

"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, fornothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance shewould know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good andloving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both yoursakes, she would never forgive you. Never. "

"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start, she'd go faster than I could. I know it, " said the boy bitterly. "She'd go away above me. I'd lose her. "

"I am not asking you to give her up, " the Bishop returned steadily. "If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. Butare you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraidto let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"

The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then heturned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat. 

"I can't give it up, Ruth, " he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany toschool. I can't give it up. "

The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:

"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to putthe blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think. "

The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly lightup. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with allits wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Nowhe knew that he had lost. 

The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day wasslipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to becaught. 

"We must not be hurried, my children, " he said, standing by the boyand girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school thisside of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days, telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will goas she directs. 

"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter couldbe no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy, " headded. 

When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding theshoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, heturned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks. 

"To-day, " he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager soulsupon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have leftthem where they were?

"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mixthings up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God willlet me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust inHim. "

II

THE CHOIR UNSEEN

Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart conventin Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six wouldhave been able to do as well as she. 

It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which shehad been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the greatworld that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet lifeof the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach. Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughtswere of a range entirely new to her. 

She compared herself with them and knew that they were really childrenin the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society andthe thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to. She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common senseand action, she was years older than they. But they had things thatshe did not have. 

They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walkacross waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walkedon. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or chokingas she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had neverin her life received a scolding, would have been driven intohysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses weresupposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they hadlearned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew howto throw a fishing line and hold a rifle. 

But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them allpassionately. She had the sense to know that those were not greatthings. But they were the things that would make her like these othergirls. And she wanted to be like them. 

Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had nevereven had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the thingsthat they had and were. 

They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang atbooks and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from thegirls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when shefound herself with two or three of them they talked a language thatshe did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupidand awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their worldand be one of them. 

Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls butinfinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters. 

That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave theirhours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was aworld all by itself. 

What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What wasthere in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They mustonce have been as different as every girl is different from everyother girl. 

How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air ofnever being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence wasthere behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to comeout with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light thatshone in their faces?

Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What didthey have to be happy about?

Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They wereCatholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed herquestion aside with a stare:

"Sisters always look like that. "

So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that worldof the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Didthey laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did theyjust pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions ofGod and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed sofamiliar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especiallywhen He was displeased. 

She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, wherethere were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the treesto the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as aprinted book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She couldread the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away fromher. 

Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its doorin the face of her sharp, hungry mind. 

And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worldsabout her--the world of the Catholic Church. 

Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little greenbuilding in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church. 

Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. Thepictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroomdoor. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it. It came and went through every door of life. 

All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers werealive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much. The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought againstit. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted toargue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrongsometimes. 

But just when she was sure that she had found something false, something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her, she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was alwaysready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she hadgotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what waswrong with her that she could not understand? She could learneverything else faster and more easily than the other girls could. 

Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fellnervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burningtears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her. 

The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills toconquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her. Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand thesestrange women about her. Would never understand them. 

Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow andthe wild winds were her friends?

She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying ingreat, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for herhome, for her hills. 

At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms wereaired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless littlebundle of broken nerves lying across the piano. 

She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian. 

But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone. 

The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that everynew pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the othergirls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drovethem away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick forthe sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understandher. 

She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where shecould look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peepeddown upon her in the hills. 

She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framedlittle pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the nameshad clung to them all the years. 

She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places wherethey belonged when she looked at them from the hills. 

Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and hermother whom she had never seen. 

Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealinginto her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, soillusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as othersounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy sensesdirectly into the spirit and the heart. 

It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freeditself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and camecarrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world. 

It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ ofthe Compline to their Queen in Heaven. 

Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignantevensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled withbooks and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laidbare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures. 

She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of thewindows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knewvaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried herbeyond all thought. 

She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood themif she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, ourSweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where wordswere never needed. 

She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning andweeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tideof all the sorrow of all the world. 

On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear thetriumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _ThePromises of Christ_. 

The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows, leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of thatunseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to themeasure of the heart of the world. 

It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but theundying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of thelittle blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on theirpyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed underthe forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, whichknows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised it as she lay there trembling. 

Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked orlaughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart andplay upon it and lead her whether she would or no. 

It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her. 

Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would notgive up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make itfollow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands andmaybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in adarkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier'sdaughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her towalk upon!

No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. Shewould not! She would not give in to it. 

It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of theChoir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it. 

But she would not. Never would she give in to it. 

In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music cameagain; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenchedat her heart until she could stand it no longer. 

The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day. 

She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back toher hills, where there was peace for her. 

She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so thatFather Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapelfor the sisters' early mass. 

That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls wouldbe still in their rooms. 

She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would takeonly these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest didnot matter. 

When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out anddown the dim, broad stairs. 

The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges. 

She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, freeair of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fledaway into the dawn. 

The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting cameout of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. Hisuncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts toLowville and the railroad. 

Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has beendoing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue todo as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always adreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or hiscross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often thanyou would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from thedrudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to workharder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows thathe has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men. He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him. He has grit and energy. 

He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for thesethings that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which heknows his things are worth. 

Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put onthe sled under Cassius Bascom's feet. 

"Don't kick that, Catty, " she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk. " There was just alittle catch in the laugh with which she said this. She wasremembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with theirlunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel throughfrom Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. Itwas easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quiteforgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had beena standing joke in the hills all these years. 

She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. Sheneeded him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys donot come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry forhim through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. Butshe was not crying now. 

Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched herarms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kissher. 

He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother verywell. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried totell when we were leaving. 

"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the timeslipping by, and I'll be back. "

She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was alie. But she backed him up sturdily:

"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in notime. "

Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblongobject in her hands. 

"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this onpurpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just haveto put it in your overcoat pocket. "

Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered withfelt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when hewent down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brickhad furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of hishumiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. Hewondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, wouldhave known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket ofhis big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned tokiss his aunt. 

"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany, " she lectured. "Makeyour landlady heat it for you every night. "

A noise in the road made them all turn. 

Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard. 

It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard timeon the road. They must have been out all night, for they could nothave started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise. 

Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutterhad a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they hadkicked themselves and each other in the drifts. 

As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the menshouted:

"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that roadall night. "

"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves, " saidMrs. Whiting. 

"Rogers, " said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if Iever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring. "

Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and steppedstiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praisingeye, and asked:

"Who's the one to talk to here?"

Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with anotherquestion. 

"What do you want?"

Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache andcold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke. 

"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in thisseason. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything likethis. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't dothis sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the peopleand can do it. "

"Well, I'm going away now, " said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty hereknows the people and the country better than most and he can goanywhere. "

The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly oldface all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shellfrom Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not thekind of man that the big man wanted. 

"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply. 

"Albany Law School, " said Jeffrey promptly. 

"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got somethingfor you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten lawschools. Put both teams into the barn, " the big man commanded loudly. 

Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will ofthis brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In thatmoment something told him that he would not go to law school; wouldnever go there; that his life was about to take a twist away fromeverything that he had ever intended. 

Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

"Come into the house. "

In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea forthe two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth andexplained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sankinto a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to beready to make good his threat of staying until spring. 

"I represent the U. & M. Railroad. We are coming up through here inthe spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminentdomain for this whole section, " said Rogers. 

"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_the country. "

"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber. They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the wholecountry with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for, anyway. "

Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother'ssharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his placeto listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions andarguments afterward. 

"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means, "the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. Iknow who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm goingto make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among themto make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn'tbelieve me. You can make them see it. "

"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey. 

"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it toyou. "

Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to takingresponsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anythingand this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's goodopinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtlythan this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by aman of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is aman, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experiencedmen. Jeffrey was ready to listen. 

"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again. 

"Of course I do. "

"I thought so, " said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm hisprevious judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad hasgot to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head ofLittle Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domainmeans. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at therailroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointedto name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing thosereferees. Do you understand me?"

"Yes. I see, " said Jeffrey. "But--"

"No buts at all about it, young man, " said Rogers, waving his hand. "The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--withinthirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. Ifthey don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forestland. And you know how much that brings. 

"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for yourland. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get mewithin the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It'sthe thing that I want you to do. 

"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over. Here are the options, " said the big man, pulling a packet of foldedpapers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. Allyou have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Thenyour work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will bewaiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"

"But say, " Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means mymother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have toleave their home!"

"Of course, " said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keephis family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'llhave the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style, in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay hereafter you're gone. You were going away. Did you think, " he saidshrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while youwere away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get awayyourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her. 

"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give hera chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live. 

"Think it over. "

Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried tothink in his life. But he could make nothing of it. 

He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly setadrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassiusand Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And hethought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything. 

He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk hadgone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to hismother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which toldhim to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'llwrite to you next week. "

No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. Hestormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished MissLetitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man ledhim off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestationthat he was glad to drop him. 

In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do nobetter than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time forthought, the boy could not refuse his offer. 

So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out onthe down trip to Lowville. 

Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision. 

"It is too big for us, Jeff, " she said. "We do not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why, or what about. 

"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do youremember him, Jeffrey?"

"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me. "

"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He couldtell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion. Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. Idon't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow. He'll tell you what it means. "

 * * * * *

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the thirdtime he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of theSacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had leftthe convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did notgive him any more light on the matter than the two previous readingshad done. 

Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only theother day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies andher progress and of every new thing that was interesting her. 

The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her"Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside. Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thoughtof the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keepRuth there in the hills. 

As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door totell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room askingto see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business toany one but the Bishop himself. 

The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was inAlbany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear lightupon Ruth Lansing's disappearance. 

"I came to you, sir, " said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him achair, "because you could tell us what to do. "

"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"

"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly. 

The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing. 

"This, " the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram. 

"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he readthe message. 

"I thought you were coming to tell me that. "

"No, " said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn'twrite to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. Butshe wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leavingthere. "

"I suppose not, " said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone awaysuddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me. "

"Yes. " And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the comingof Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tellhow he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. Hemade it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution thathad held him back from accepting the offer on the instant. 

The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the youngfellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in hisold-fashioned, stiff way and said:

"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey toher my deepest respect. 

"I do not know what it all means, " he went on, in another tone. "But Ican soon find out. "

He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across thestreet. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here amoment. "

The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway. 

"What is it?" asked the Bishop. 

"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you, but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, orfrightened. "

Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door. 

"Sit down where you were, young man, " said the Bishop sharply. If RuthLansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that shewas--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for theBishop's credulity. 

"Send the girl in here, " he said shortly. 

Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. Shedid not see Jeffrey. 

"I came straight here all the way, " she said, "to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. Icould not stay there. "

"I am very glad to see you, Ruth, " said the Bishop easily, "and ifyou'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even morepleased. "

Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey wasabundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his doorwas indeed a coincidence. 

"Now, " said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. Itconcerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, GeneralChandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power ofthis part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how seriousyour situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen. "

Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a littleresentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordealof meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down andlisten to something, she did not know what. 

The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the roomand the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of militaryprecision. 

"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General, " saidthe Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in theBeaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M. Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will youtell them?"

The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of hiscoat. 

"No, Bishop, " he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of thatmatter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would notdare. I do not often have to say that. "

"No, " said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before. "

"But I can do this, Bishop, " said the General, rising. "If you willcome over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, whatI know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you cantell these young people. "

The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, wherethe two men stood and talked in undertones. 

"Jeffrey, " said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "ifyou don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_you!"

Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hersto convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room andfaced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all. 

In quick whispers, he told her all he knew. 

The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From thedoor the General saluted gravely and stalked away. 

"The answer, " said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "isone word--Iron. "

To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss aboutnothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly. 

"No one knows how much there is, or how little there is, " said theBishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of thefarms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they willlet the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices. "

"I'll start back to warn the people to-night, " said Jeffrey, jumpingup. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!"

"Wait, " said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, ifyou serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than itis worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And theywill, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in yourcommissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them, they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left withlittle or nothing. Better go slowly, young man. "

"What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, forfooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, beforeI'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go upinto the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And mymother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to gowith me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!"

"And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I_would_!" she chanted defiantly. 

"Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling. 

"But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey, " Ruth saiddemurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help youI would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm goingback, to the convent, to face my fight. "

"But, but, " said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away. "

"I did. I was, " said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of somethingcalling to me. It was such a big thing, " she went on, turning to theBishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought itwould crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted, not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a ChoirUnseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow. 

"But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now Iknow what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life, to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turnback. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back. "

"I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing, " said the Bishop. "I'mglad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be veryglad now to go back. "

"As for you, young man, " he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that yourmother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you. Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is beforeyou. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. Whenyou are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_. "

III

GLOW OF DAWN

Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was pastthe middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it wasthe time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains hadalready gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would notbe enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Thenhe would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River, where the saw-dust came to bother him. 

He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond atthe very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down anddrew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of fliesand the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through fourseasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy, quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not disputewith him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fishever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones. He liked flies better. 

His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sunwas not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfastroom at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away upon every side to the rim of the high hills. 

Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begunto draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface ofthe water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was insight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about acat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by thecat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come. 

Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, inother years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him ashe ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the veryfirst time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. Theywere not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of thecat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. Buthe knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most temptingflies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating andchallenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in thecat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of thepond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them thathe had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girlhad trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, andTwinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hookcaught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he doveand fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten thatlesson. 

But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool. He was growing big and fat, and a little careless. 

As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen cameskimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once. Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from thewater!

A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out ofthe water! He had the fly in his mouth. 

Then the struggle began. 

Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bankbehind which she had been hiding. 

The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping throughthe water like a shot. 

The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish. 

He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off herbalance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinginggrimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of thepond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear ofbreaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the lineshe could until he should tire a little. 

Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut linesinging like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she hadfallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Herbreath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on. 

Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed himback each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She hadnever before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom hadalways been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately underher breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words andtook a new hold on the pole. 

The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. Hehad lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that herstrength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly. 

She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She mustcatch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water. It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and losehim entirely, but she would try it. 

Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. Shesuddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but itheld. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, waswhipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dovedesperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank. Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and herprize was secure. 

"It's you, Twinkle-tail, " she panted, as she held him up for a goodlook, "sure enough!"

She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlesslywith a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak anddizzy from her struggle. 

Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:

"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless hesees you. "

"Yes, that's him all right, " said a voice behind her. "I'd know him ina thousand. "

She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting. 

"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't beback till to-morrow. "

"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to, "said Jeffrey, smiling. 

"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointedwhen I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How isyour fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail, " she hurried on alittle nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing herdeterminedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him upstrategically between them. 

"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten byher ruse. 

The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Thenshe seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm ledhim over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down. 

"Now tell me, " she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroadpeople. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, fromyourself. "

But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes andsaid with a show of meanness:

"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You justwalked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to deathbrutally. I know you did. You're always cruel. "

Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she hadfallen on the rocks. 

Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the handand dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt downby the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with herhandkerchief. 

"Now, " she said, "tell me. "

"Well, " he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained bydelay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they hadfound iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to pushus all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found Iwasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had RafeGadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French aroundFrench Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake. 

"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending moneyaround free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to himoutright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what theland would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as wellhave held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests ofthe people that had land. He was getting paid well for every optionthat he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will havetrouble with that man yet. 

"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They hadfooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He hadstarted out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties overon that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for thepeople to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their findingiron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was themaddest man you ever saw. 

"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. Hewent right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land notto sign anything. 

"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for therailroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion andconspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down toLowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. SoI was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to getme away from here yet. "

"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actuallystarted to build the railroad?"

"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through. But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that theywant to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run fromWelden to French Village and there is not a single town on the wholeline! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off. They're building the road just the same, so that shows that theyintend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And Isuppose they will, somehow, " he added sullenly. "They always do, Iguess. "

"But the people, " said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agreeto sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"

"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They onlywant to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor, and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have theland condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land. "

"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't itstrange, " she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything wedo. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And howhe came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us upand turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seemsto come into all this. 

"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North, " she went on. "Iwonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At theconvent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to thempersonally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had morereason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt thesame way. "

"He's just like the Catholic Church, " said Jeffrey suddenly, and alittle sharply; "he comes into everything. "

"Why, Jeffrey, " said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about theChurch?"

"I know, " he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lotwith the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked withtheir priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest beforeit's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church. It comes into everything. I don't like it. "

He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietlystudied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a fewmonths had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she hadknown. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face wasturning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and ofharshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness andwill, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did notdislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a littletimid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limitsbeyond which she could not play with this new man that she found. 

"It's all right to be religious, " he went on argumentatively. "Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don'tinterfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher formarrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if youwant to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those peoplelive. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything. They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what theymust say. I don't like it. "

"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"

"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there wassomething that had changed you. And I might have known it was that. "

"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came Iwas just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me atall. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I hadgone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the sameas I was before. "

"But it has changed you, " he persisted. "And it's going to change youa lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth, " he said, suddenly softening, "you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference, with us, I mean?"

The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way youmean. 

"So long as we are what we are, " she said again after a pause, "wewill be just the same to each other. If it should make somethingdifferent out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not bethe same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then youwould not be the same to me. 

"It's too soon, " she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me, yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought andfeeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you. "

He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understoodthat she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw somethingin her face with which he did not dare to argue. 

He got up saying:

"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'llbe back to-night to help you eat the trout. "

"Where are you going?"

"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that areshaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to RafeGadbeau and letting their land go. "

"But, " Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is totheir own interest! Are they blind?"

"I know, " said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with thosepeople. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have toscratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollarstogether from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready, green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them. "

"Good luck, then, Jeff, " she said cheerily; "and get back early if youcan. "

"Sure, " he said easily as he picked up his hat. 

"And, say, Ruth. " He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn'tbe back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? Iwouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not verysharp sometimes. Will you?"

"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please. "

"Oh, sure, " he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of thepond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trailthat went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the otherside. 

Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth. 

This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left whenshe went down to the convent five months before. She could see it inhis walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she hadseen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power thathe had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was notdiscouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of hisboyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim andthoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, doggedstruggle. 

He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Whyshould he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to havewarned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? Andwhat was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fearin connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, thelumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in thespring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stopin the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spendtheir money. 

What had Jeffrey to fear?

Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to herunless he had good reason to think that something might happen tohim. 

Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. Themen were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generallyruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers hadall been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted inthe soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drivethem from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes, where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckonwith them as bitter, stubborn fighting men. 

Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. Inanother moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. Shewondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgottenthat she would surely be standing where he had left her?

He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Thenhe stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque andbusinesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly haveseen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had justknown that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He hadplunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with whichhis mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and ofeverything else. 

The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that mighthave been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go aboutthe business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But itgave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming. 

She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived. Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew menfought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was alittle for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour andgood judgment would make for him out of the land. 

Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealthor the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely cometo look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even thescent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle. 

A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt thepremonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on herhills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great, seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and thecities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing right into the very hills. 

She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishingtackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home. 

Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding thatRuth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent wasenough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and topay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life wasarranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finishedschool. 

It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands ofstrangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she hadruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It wouldbe very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belongedand how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by andsee others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers andDaddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was herplace. It held all the memories and all the things that connected herwith her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to itand call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and hermother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which shehad been born, she could understand the fierceness with which menwould fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened. 

Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguelycalled "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away fromher. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage ofindignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to thehouse, as though she saw it already threatened. 

She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed andwent around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarthweeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds. 

"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the womanexclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when youdidn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I toldNorman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night. "

"Oh, no, " said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, yousee. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milkand slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had todo it myself this morning. "

"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"

"Why, no, " said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork abouthalf an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"

"Oh, nobody, " said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'up at French Village yesterday. "

"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded. 

"Oh, just talk, I suppose, " Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's Iblame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out ofit, I'd skedaddle, too. "

Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm. 

"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girlwas trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herselfhad said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She musttell everything now. 

"Well, " she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over theireyes. "

"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me. "

"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them toswear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to therailroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the peopleback till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad forhis own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's soldthis farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, forfour times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough towork on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what theycan get. He's gone now; skipped out. "

"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him onlyhalf an hour ago. "

"Oh, well, of course, " said the woman knowingly, "you'd know moreabout it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose. "

Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She saidshortly:

"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting. "

"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful goodneighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"

"Why, it doesn't matter at all, " said Ruth, as she turned toward theroad. "You only said what people were saying. "

"But I wouldn't for anything, " the woman called nervously after her, "have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"

"Eat it, " said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she hadfought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now. 

Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the longtwilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading inthe old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come. 

She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back thenervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she hadbeen all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and thelong purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking downin the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to thelittle room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home. 

She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with theelasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint ofmorning, and the cloud of the night had passed. 

She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth wasjust stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylightand action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She waseager to answer to his faith. 

"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as shecaught him crossing the yard from the milk house. 

"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of themountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"

"I want to use him, " said Ruth. "May I?"

"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain'tbeen driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he'sliable to act foolish. "

"I'm going to _ride_ him, " said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to thehorse barn door for a bridle. 

"Now, say, Miss, " the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brownpony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that coltis just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long. "

"Thank you, " said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'llfind work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day. "

The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stoodchamping at the door while she went in to get something to eat. Whenshe brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously atthe strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened iton. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood lookingdoubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to thehorse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as aconcession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could nolonger go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse. 

She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of hiskind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to actbadly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on hishind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut himsharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for thehill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches. 

The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try tohold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better. 

He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into thetrail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, ina strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement ofthe horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the dividewhere she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl thatwas ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace. 

Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffreyhad merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him onthe way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her tohurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, ofthe boy she loved was in danger!

She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffreyhad gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to theirdoors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up thestony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves nowkeyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of theroad. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That hehad not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way. What was it?

On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrushwas grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer alongthe edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream thattumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country. 

Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as shepushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to thetrail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rockbed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle tolook down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey camecarelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--asingle blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gonestumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not beeven the sign of a struggle. 

Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves. 

"Ruth Lansing, " she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool ofyourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot ofgirls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that therenever was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Justkeep that in your mind and hustle on about your business. "

When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork shemet old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man didnot know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharplyat the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give anyattention to her question. 

"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly. "Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he goon up country?"

"He went on up country. "

Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word. 

"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twentyyards. "He came back again. "

Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to hisknees. 

"Didn't ask me that, " the old man chortled, as she came back, "but ifI didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up thehills. "

"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back. "

"Didn't do that, nuther. "

"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears ofvexation rising into her voice. 

"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there, " saidthe old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village. You his wife? You're mighty young. "

But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping downthe rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones. 

In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let thecolt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and onup the stiff slope. 

She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of thecountry that way and had no doubt of finding her road. 

Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffreyhad merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and hadgone there and, of course, had spent the night there. 

By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was droppingdown through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she hadbegun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly rememberedthat it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day ofobligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. Therewould be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear withher own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting. 

Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in theglory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store wasclosed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would puton his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass. 

The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to knowvaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle onthe back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little manreach hastily for his coat of ceremony. 

"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth droveup. 

"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell mewhat time it begins?"

"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle. "Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minutefrom the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever mustawait her convenience. 

He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feetloose and slid down deftly. 

"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb, " said Ruth as she took hishand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"

A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street andstood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail ofRuth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots. 

"'Cynthe, " said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on mypew for Mass. " He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horseaway to the shed in the rear of the store. 

The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. Thelittle man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he notanswer?

She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing aboutthe church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questionsof them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to afront pew. 

At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the churchdoor they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of whichRuth could only catch a little here and there. 

"You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, Is'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one_jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance. " Arsene ledRuth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. Therewere tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the foodthat they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a greatstump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings. 

It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment beforebeen so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switchtheir whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soonfound their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering intothe fun with all her heart. 

"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I wantto know him. "

"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English. 

"Oh, nothing, " said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him. "

The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve ofa tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth'srequest, and wanted her to dance with him immediately. 

"No, " said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'donly break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lotabout you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we'veheard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me ifthey are true. "

"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this youngWhiting!"

Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietlyas he led her to a seat. 

As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew wasjealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make anenemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to getthis man to tell her all he would. 

"One rascal, I tell you, " repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all thepeople. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. Hesell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out. An' he leave these poor French people in the soup. 

"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluencewith that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nineo'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sellout everything on the option to him. "

"But, " objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whitingshould come back before then?"

"He don' come back, that fellow. "

"How do you know?"

"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that. "

"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow, " shesaid, turning suddenly upon him. 

"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questionedexcitedly. 

"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us, " she smiled as shearose, "and I think you are in for a lecture. "

Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun andtalked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let RafeGadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she hadalarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to JeffreyWhiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way. 

When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bellringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his placeamong the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door. When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slipunnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing wasfinished, then she almost ran to the door. 

Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all dayin the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trailwhich she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the streetto Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that BromBones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail theman left the Village. 

Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let himhave his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled upsharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on themain road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull intothe trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey wassomewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. Andhe was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was stillthere. 

For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that theman was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darknesshad fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The manhad turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threwherself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threwup his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him formaking no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the roadand tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleadingwith him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where shehad heard the pony. 

In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet foundthemselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly. She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confrontedher. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heartstopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could notdistinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. Theother-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it wasJeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever itwas. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly intothe brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought arifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probablywounded and bound. 

She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit ofthe place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirelyof logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knewthat she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be aprisoner there unless he were hurt. 

She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure. He would not stay long. 

As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a littlestream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut. Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something forJeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, theonly white thing that showed about her and settled down for a longwait. 

First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse andride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even gettingbeyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. Hemight be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing hadalways learned to do things for herself. She had always dislikedappealing for help. 

Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaningagainst the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silenceof the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was beingsaid. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau goaway without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she wouldbe free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be ableto get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easilyhave him there before nine o'clock. 

When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began tobe worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going awayat last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position againstthe tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion. 

Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there allnight?

Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin. Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever soquietly. It was firmly barred on the inside. 

What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had shenot brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now, and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of ridingfor help, too late!

She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in thefirst place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without agun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age tothe taut, ragged nerves of the girl. 

The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground stilllay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into thebushes. 

Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and thehot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Herheart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God;a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. Thewords that the night before would not form themselves for her nowsprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth, to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, andanxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooledpeople from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the_Glow_ of _Dawn_. 

Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sureconfidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down thepath to his pony. 

Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, andcalled to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was lockedwith a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. Shereached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. Shebeat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. Therewas no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Herhands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on thetough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herselfagainst the door. 

Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnacewhere they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tiedtogether down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm wasbroken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage ofthe night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowedup every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands andloosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth. 

"Don't talk, Jeff, " she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lieeasy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village atonce. "

She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzilyon the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water andgave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him asshe would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and halfdelirious with pain. 

Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He hadnever before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. Butthe girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black earthat he finally gave in. 

When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacketinto a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to theheathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail. 

When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:

"Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sellout while we can and take mother and go away. "

"Why, Jeff, dear, " she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different. You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;remember?"

Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knewhe was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this. 

All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country weregathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standingon the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as hethought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speechwhen he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying agirl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, therailroad lawyer beside him, said:

"Go on, man. What's the matter with you?"

The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until JeffreyWhiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his fight again. 

"Rogers, " he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and theothers to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that youcould spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if ithadn't been for this brave girl here. 

"Now, Rogers, you liar, " he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, totell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you afoot of land. I dare you!"

Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeauknew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full ofpotential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a fewminutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to themand nearly ruined them. 

A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she wavedthem away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him downand half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office. 

Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones towardhome, and gave him his head. 

For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morningair along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it hadlearned in the Glow of Dawn. 

IV

THE ANSWER

The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committeerooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not aroutine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which wasvirtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of theirhomes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill didnot say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in thatpart of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should begranted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square milesof the region, in order to help the development of the country. 

The committee was composed of five members, three of the majorityparty in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of therailroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had justfinished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people ofthat part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill shouldbecome a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of thefarmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He hadalmost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot upthere in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had nomeans of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. Thescraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in hispicture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped bythe beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor. 

When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committeelooked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It wasa grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not oftenprivileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If thehearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. Butthe bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majorityhad given orders that the hearing should be public. 

So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay themotives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities inthose three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had beensaid about iron. 

No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree ofinterest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outsidepublic. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during itsdelivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and hadalready turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of thenext witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room. 

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of theroom and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, sparefigure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as thesnow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritangovernor, he would have attracted attention under almost anycircumstances. 

Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his ordersfrom the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should bereported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipatedno difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone throughwith. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions thathad been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of theRacquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. Thechairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers ofthe opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in generaland this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagueswould vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of theminority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, wasabout all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted onthe coming of the Bishop of Alden. 

"The committee would like to hear, sir, " began the chairman, as theBishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of thisbill. "

The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dullsession of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishopturned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:

"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County. "

"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands thatyou do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman whohas just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be mostdirectly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including thoseof your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in yourcounty to the proposed grant?"

"Your committee, " said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there isthe most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. Ifthere had not been that opposition, there would have been no call forthe bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could havegotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grantwould have been given without question. Your committee knows thisbetter than I. "

"But, " returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroadwas not able to get those options because a boy up there in theBeaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance againstthe railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the optionsin unfair and unlawful ways. "

The chairman paused an impressive moment. 

"In fact, " he resumed, "from what this committee has been able togather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in thematter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that somerival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fanciedgrievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven, but there was every appearance. "

The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at thefeet of the committee. 

"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting, " he said, "was guided by me. I directed hismovements from the beginning. "

The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the factthat a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody hadunderstood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of theFrench-Canadian farmers of the hills. 

They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue ofthe case. No one had expected that he would attack the main questionof the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself theprincipal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up inthe hills for six months!

The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. Theywere trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before theirreaders. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of NewEngland, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of thatcollection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment. " Hehad endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his warrecord as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known asthe Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley tothe Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherdof the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew hisways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern, ascetic set of his countenance. 

As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put intotheir notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. Thatwell-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He hadbeen too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition tothe U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop hadtaken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He couldneither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it. 

"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee, " hetemporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to therailroad?"

"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to therailroad, " said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee hasnothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has alreadybeen granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from thepresent owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearlyeighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of therailroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, thiscommittee knows that there is iron ore in these hills. 

"I have said that I do not represent any one here, " the Bishop wenton. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills whostand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have novoice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committeebecause only in this way can the case of my people reach the great, final trial court of publicity before the whole State. 

"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will haveheard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, forthey cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that theirhands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannotuproot them by the stroke of a pen. 

"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were oncemy comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I wouldbeg your committee to consider very earnestly this question beforebringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of theState. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country tothe peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that theirfathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness. 

"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development, which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They areopposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporationpower to drive them from the homes they love, and that without faircompensation. 

"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what ithas meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know thatthis bill is directly against everything that is American. 

"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of theState, but you will never convince them that this bill is the realwill of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men. They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get optionsfrom them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Theirhomes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than anylaw you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. Itwill set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills. 

"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in thename--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell youthis bill should never go back to the Senate. 

"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who arefound weak enough to let it pass here. "

The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporterscould be plainly heard in the hush of the room. 

Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he hadbeen wanting to put from the beginning. 

"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed, " he began to theBishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadianimmigrants and not usually owners of land. "

"Is it necessary for me to repeat, " said the Bishop, turning sharply, "that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighboursand my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that Iwear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not comebefore you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner ofproperty. I come because I think the cause of my friends will beserved by my coming. 

"The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might aswell have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen tocome before you, with your permission, because these facts will get awider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room. 

"I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that someof you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is inhis church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing tocreate sensation. I am willing that you should say that I havegone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come beforeyour committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put anyinterpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only sothat my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarelyand fully before all the people of the State. 

"When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then Iknow that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itselfresponsible for the passage of this bill. "

The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he sawthat none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leaveto retire. 

As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declaredthe public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporterscrowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of theCapitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevatorshaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty, summed up the matter with irreverent brevity. 

"Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway, " he said. "Not every bad billhas a bishop at the obsequies. "

"You can't tell, " said the Associated Press man slowly; "they mightreport it out in spite of all that. "

"No use, " said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touchit once this stuff is in the papers. " And he jammed a wad of flimsydown into his pocket. 

 * * * * *

Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of thehills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, wherethe trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heatof the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of thevegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone. 

Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams werereduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands werecovered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stuntedtimber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man, stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattleto the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hideitself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolenaway into the depths of the thick woods. 

Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the FrenchVillage road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched upaway from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew themenace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men hadcut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of whatthey were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound treesthat stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dyingtrees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush andtrimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake ofthe lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes andhay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was anever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber thatheld a constant threat for the little home within the ring. 

A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelentingwatchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods onunbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangersand outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from themoment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out ofthem again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginaryIndians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was anenemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, outthere in the underbrush and fallen timber. 

Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to FrenchVillage for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroadwould try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the specialsession of the Legislature. And they knew that the session wouldprobably come to a close this week. 

If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of thehills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter anduseless fight against a power with which they could not cope. Theywould have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board ofcondemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but itwould fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have toremember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himselfindependently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if hisfight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his motherbut his own miserable failure. 

Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffreyhad said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him intopoverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They hadboth meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. Andshe had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through allthe summer. 

She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. Shewould not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to gosomewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would getfor her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a littlematter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence ofJeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did notknow how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him invicious moods when he seemed capable of everything. 

She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came overArgyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast. He was bringing good news!

It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Boneswhirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moodsand followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein ofanother. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canterand gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering downupon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The twohorses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and theirtwo riders gave them no more heed than if they had been woodenhorses. 

"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"

"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain, " Ruth laughed. "You looked asthough you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How didit all come out?"

"Here's the paper, " he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of theday previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter fromthe Bishop, too, " he added. 

"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M. Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying totranslate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never surewhat headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it'sgenerally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'msure. "

"Well, it's only short, " said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "Heleaves out all the part that he did himself. "

"Of course, " said Ruth simply. "He always does. "

"He says:

"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach youbefore this does, that the special session of the Legislature closedto-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure ofjust public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidentlythought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in theopen Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of therailroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtfulthat the matter will be brought up even then. '

"You see, " said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was therepresent at all. And it was just his speech before the committee thataroused that public anger. Then he goes on:

"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter endshere. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning. Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature ofthings that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of moneyin constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your landsshould now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a merelegislative setback. They have not entered into this business inany half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it throughsomehow--anyhow. We must realise that. 

"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of acorporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporationwill have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for thatanswer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no mancan tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there willbe an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion hasbeen on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer. 

"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which menset for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do notapologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own, my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourselfcame to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most, perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question Ihave never greatly respected those limits which men set. I putthese things before you so that when the answer comes you willremember that you engaged yourself in this business solely indefence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you musttry to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heartlarger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need toremember this. 

"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in thehills, not forgetting your friend Ruth. ' That's all, " said Jeffrey, folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed thething. "

"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without botheringabout how? That is the way he does everything. "

"I suppose I ought to be satisfied, " said Jeffrey as he gathered uphis reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of theletter. It sounds like a warning to me. "

"It is a warning to you, " said Ruth thoughtfully. 

"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"

"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly, " said Ruth, trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of whatyou are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather thanto your head or about your actions. "

"Now I don't know what you mean, either, " said Jeffrey a littlediscontentedly. 

"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for Idon't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother hastoo, " said Ruth reluctantly. 

"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"

"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe thatyou're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it. But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop'shouse at Alden?"

"Yes, and I remember what you said, too. "

"We both meant it, " Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade anyof the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean itnow, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference withyou. "

"I don't know it, " he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just thething I started out to do that day. "

"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now youare fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not foranything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made thefight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting becauseyou have come to hate the railroad people. "

"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"

"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is aterrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long, long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might godeeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. Afterall, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible, menacing, Life!"

"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly. 

"I have faced that, " the girl answered evenly, "just as you have facedit. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do inanger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heartand your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen theworst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"

"I wish, " the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep hisreligion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend, " he wenton, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything. "

"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right andwrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us inlife and show us the way?"

"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do?You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part ofhis letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's theCatholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere. "

"Isn't that funny, " the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myselfsick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost franticthinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me andmake me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never thinkof it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn'tmake any difference at all. "

"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even knowthat you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it. "

The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered. 

"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff, " she said finally in athoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion?Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. AndI--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within aninch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth, " the boy apologised slowly. "It's noneof my business, anyway. "

They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below themstretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up theother slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of LansingMountain. 

Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up thehill towards them at a heart-breaking pace. 

"That's 'My' Stocking's roan, " said Jeffrey, straightening in hissaddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away. "

"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerlyfrom under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_of them!"

Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at hisbit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side ofthe road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in thethings of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it wasno time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashesdownhill. 

The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, asJeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waitedfor him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knewby sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was tohear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They wouldnot talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell herall that she needed to know. 

The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heardStocking conclude:

"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn'tsee. "

Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth. 

"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to bewatched. The country's awful dry, " he added quietly. He knew that Ruthwould need no further explanation. 

He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth, saying:

"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see themright away. And say, Ruth, " he went on, as he looked anxiously at thegreat sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between themand his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry. If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of thiscountry. You can make them go. Nobody else could. "

The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to askquestions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses andsilences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her atrust to look after the ones whom he loved. 

She put out her hand to his and said simply:

"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff. "

"I was a fool, " said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'llremember. Forgive me, please, Ruth. "

"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now, " shesaid softly. 

Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over thehill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until theywere out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifleacross the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She would have given everything in her world to have had back what shehad said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes. 

Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village roadfor an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a longwinding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country. 

"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away, " said Jeffrey, asthey came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comesstraight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there isany. "

"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out ifwe go that way. "

"I guess that won't hurt us, " Jeffrey returned. "If anything happenswe might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of otherpeople would have to do the same. "

"All right then, " Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give thehorses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over thehills here; and then we can go on as far as you like. "

At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, andhaving fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higherwoods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the greattrees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too highup to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels. Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops ofthe trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving thehorses to pick their own canny footing up the trail. 

"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rodealong. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer. "

"I don't know, " Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end ofthe rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody'ssure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hillssomewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That'sall we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty. "

"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway, " said Jeffrey. "They haveno business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of somesort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we makeBald Mountain before daylight?"

"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we'rethrough this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We oughtto get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'llgive us a little sleep, if we feel like it. "

True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinlygrassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was asoft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divideor it might be miles below on the lowlands. 

Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of themountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace hadgone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey haddone, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had notheard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care togive any signals of their own whereabouts. 

As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroadthat morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose wasthe one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it wasuseless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to befeared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in thenight. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself. And the first blaze would rouse the whole country. 

The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in theopen to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But thesoftness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack treesfloating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began totell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch. 

"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My, '" he said, shaking himself. "You mightas well. I'll wake you in an hour. "

A ready snore was the only answer. 

Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff andweary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darknessas they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day thatwas before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knewtheir horses must be gotten down to some water course before night. 

A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just belowthem. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the areafor sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the worldto themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain andwatching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distanttrees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and searchmore carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowingstraight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potentialenemy more to be feared than all the doings of men. 

Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of theshadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man andstout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friendor foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he wasor what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started theirhorses pell-mell down the hill towards him. 

He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran backinto the wood. 

In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business. 

They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behindthe light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a lineof living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch throughthe long dried grass and brush!

The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths orhorses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it wastoo far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in recklessrage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, tostamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and afair shot at the fiend there within the wood. 

Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave ofleaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest. They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!

The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started andbegan to run another line of fire in the other direction. At thatmoment Stocking yelled:

"There's another starting, straight in front!"

"Get him, " Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill thisone. "

Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seenstarting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and drivingmadly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, nowsaw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought withhim a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse andthat his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, andleaping free with his gun ran towards the man. 

The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still usinghis torch and moving rapidly away. 

Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until hewas within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way amongthe trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey droppedto one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closedupon the running man and clung to him. 

Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It wasRogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed. 

"I am going to kill him, " said Jeffrey under his breath, as he againfixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast. 

A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took ahalf step forward, and fell on his face. 

Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had notpulled, ran forward to where the man lay. 

He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass. 

He was dying. No need for a second look. 

His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean roundhole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hairshowed just the merest streak of red. 

Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroadtorch, with which he had done his work. 

Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shothad come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, nosign of another human being anywhere. 

Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing atother fleeing figures in the woods. 

He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it intoa patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, andstarted clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of hisrifle. 

He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge inhis gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past hisear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of saplinghe began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire. 

The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment beenstarted, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where ithad gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung tohis work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think ofto do for the moment. 

He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously afterthe fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fireand stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousersand shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away fromhim, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther onalong the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could nowstop that torrent of fire. 

He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind thefire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could besaved. He looked around for his horse. 

Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and oldErskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey wasstanding and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogerslay. 

Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little groupof horsemen and upon the boy standing there. 

Myron Stocking spoke at last:

"Mine got away, Jeff, " he said slowly. 

Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the wordsflashed upon him. 

"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him fromthe woods. My gun went off accidental. "

Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look atJeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had beentoo muffled for them to hear. 

Again Stocking broke the silence. 

"What difference does it make, " he said. "Any of us would have done itif we could. "

"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't, " shouted Jeffrey. "The shot fromthe woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot frombehind!"

Old Erskine Beasley took command. 

"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live menand women and children to think about to-day, " he said. "Straightenhim out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. Thealarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising, too, " he added. 

"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless itwas. 

He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face ofthis unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward hismaster. 

He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the partythat was to try to get around the fire from that side. 

He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them. There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. Theyprobably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which drawsitself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty ofblood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselveswould wish to have done it. But the circle is there. 

Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle. 

Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before saidthat she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes. 

V

MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE

Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisonerreleased from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was aspirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down avalley. It was a maniac at large. 

The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of thelower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The firespread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of themountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills. 

Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed thejuicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should becoming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down theside of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feedand began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other aboutthis thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth. 

Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking lookedblinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb mindsunderstood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting backto the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking downlengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in theirhearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fleddown the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is ahireling. 

Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out ofthe houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Somecried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at theoncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the Godof fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or hertreasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in itscrib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags. 

Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures werequickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them intothe wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of thesweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and tookthe reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capablehands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that wentwith them. 

They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But itwas the law that they should take the brood and run to safety. 

Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind thetrees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probablyuseless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the lawthat men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovelsto the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earthwhich the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert thefire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down alittle, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes. 

This was their business. There was little chance that they wouldsucceed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last momentand run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law, that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing thepoint of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, noten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities, some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground, or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sectormight be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten. And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled andblinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ranpast their already smoking homes and down the wind for life. 

Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down along spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday hewould have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place ofleadership and command among them which he had for months been takingin the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have hadthat place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men hadcome to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear, dispirited and miserable. 

They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang uponits flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now ofgetting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rollingcurtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing aheadof it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire andfight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it wasmaking for itself. 

If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it wouldhave driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than itsoriginal front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breezeas it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that theend of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that couldbe fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flamethat leaped and danced ever outward and onward. 

Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it. They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brushand grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doingsomething. They shouted to each other when they had driven it backeven a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree. They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweatbegan to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air tobreathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, forthey were surely pushing the fire in upon itself. 

A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smokeabout them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleevespressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass. 

When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon themfrom three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewiseso that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they hadcleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had beenturned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down thehill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful, tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at theirpuny efforts. 

Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path ofthe flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring bythem on its way. 

Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap hadcaught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following theirinstinct to hunt water. 

The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They werefive already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they mustfollow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run attheir best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch ofthe way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge fromspreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fireshoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished whatthese five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But theyhung on in desperation. 

Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fireback a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something. And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behindand around them so that they had to race for life. 

Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and amongthe broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knewit. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of beingcut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep anysteady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied andwhirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every directionand with it the fire ran apparently at will. 

When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were justbeginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind wouldsend a ring of fire around to the other side so that they sawthemselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off. 

Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the northside of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearlyeast and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions. If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save thesouthern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north ofthe lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did notenter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have hadplenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men werefighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is theway of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with thefire. 

They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longeran impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was acunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Itseyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red andbloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with theroar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lipswere cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it. 

They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of themhad forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last nightand who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten thoseother men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men intothe hills to do this thing. 

Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and thefight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sightof the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. Hefought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, untilthere was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in hisbrain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quartergiven or asked with the demon of the fire. 

Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south andjoined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, wherethe Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could holdthe fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along thenorth side of the lakes and the other half of the country would besafe. 

The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. Thefive weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollentongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strengthfrom the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back downthe north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging withcharred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it. 

They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and theirwork would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! Godin Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and_drink_!

Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Herewas the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder, fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath ofthe fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed thefire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. Theyhad won! It could not beat them now!

As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of theplacid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raiseda shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voicecroaking out what would have been a cry of triumph. 

But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they hadsafely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flameswent dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread outaround the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, thething was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flameswent roaring to the top of it. 

The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to getthemselves out of that encircling death. 

When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw thefull extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment ofvictory. 

Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but theythemselves could not get near the lake. 

Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they couldnot reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line betweenthem and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet inthe lake. 

Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, accordingto the nature that was in each. 

Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two menpushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smokeand waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were notmen of the hills. 

They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who hadset the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headedstraight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And_they_ had _water_!

All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting firefury of the day, rushed back upon him. 

He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he hadnot. 

Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill thosetwo there in the water. _In the water!_

He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of thefire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward, his face buried in a patch of bare earth. 

Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. Whenthey had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into himwith their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As heunderstood, he turned on his face moaning:

"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had. "

And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west. 

 * * * * *

The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as theintolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canaland the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of themorning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, fourhours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good washand rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was hequerulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow anddusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop hadfound plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentlephilosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood thefaults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour atthe back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, JosephWinthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop. 

But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing inAlbany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He hadappealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And theconscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that theU. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills fromtheir homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Thenthe conscience of the people of the State had gone off about itsbusiness, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The publicwould forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with amild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few daysat most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But therailroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behindit who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results. 

He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strikein some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the handthat struck. 

Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of thefirst hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of themountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blueof the sky behind them. 

Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where OldForge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and thedivide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The daywas very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew thatmorning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the earlymorning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now. 

Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journeyup this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fairday. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the topof other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you rememberthat his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand squaremiles of broken country, you will see that he had need of markingposts. 

Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach fromthe western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country tothe east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany andaround by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east byMalone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into themountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre ofhis diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, southand west. 

He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station hewent out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view. 

Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where heknew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he hadrecognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountainhad suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat andsat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the wholecontour of the hills that he had known was changed under his veryeyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smoothskulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks shouldhave been. 

He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul ofJoseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heartwhose passions ran deep below a placid surface. 

At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped andhurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down thewire of a fire in the hills. 

Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going overthe wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company, between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the officeat Steuben. 

The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question. 

Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy. "

The Bishop stood quiet a moment. 

Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window wasthe face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder ofcertain things. 

Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. Hegrabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said. "

The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:

"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anythingon the wire?"

Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet redcolour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles werecoming back. He was now coherent. 

No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down thewire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changedabruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call. "

Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica, " he said. They waiteda little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Calleverything, " Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for thebenefit of the Bishop. 

"It must be big, Bishop, " he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"

But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departingtrain. 

At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house. Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from thehousekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady'ssaddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and thehills. 

It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was notelegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills ahalf hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm amongthe people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivatedcountry between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady'sclothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave thematter no more than a mild wonder. 

For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt roadover which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of thewinter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. Hethought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning onthat night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. Butmore than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men upthere in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all. 

He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have startedaccidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent meninto the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men werecaught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloodyjustice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady'shorse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of hiswell fed life. 

Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter ofkeeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for afresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had justslid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in thehills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague. He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the wholematter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have thefresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot. 

The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corbenbelieved that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of thediocese. Corben did not believe that. 

In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man tobelieve him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food inhis pockets he pressed on into the high hills. 

Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road. But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringeof the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of theorigin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyondthat pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them. 

Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to aska question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of thesituation. They had been called from their beds in the early morningby the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with thechildren. That was all they could tell. 

As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bonesescorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knewwithout asking that the fire was now coming near, for these womenwould not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger. 

In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptoryauthority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even tothe end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the ideathat Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himselfin the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on themere argument that he was a man. 

The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told whatshe knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the roadyesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen inthe hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward BaldMountain. 

The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched. He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and thebreaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate andfutile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back ofthat screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker eventhan the one of the fire itself. 

"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruthhad to tell. 

"Yes. We had just read it. "

"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly. 

"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him, " the girl answeredsimply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answerimplied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill. 

"They will all be driven in upon French Village, " said the Bishopslowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The roadfrom here there, is it open, do you know?"

"No one has come down from that far, " said Ruth. "We have watched thepeople on the road all day. But probably they would not leave thelake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the roadcertainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comesdown. "

"I must hurry, then, " said the Bishop, gripping his reins. 

"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will betrapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except afew men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannotgo through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost. "

"Well, I can always come back, " said the Bishop lightly, as he set hishorse up the hill. 

"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop, " Ruth pleaded afterhim. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on theroad!"

But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether heheard or not, he did not answer or look back. 

Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not knowwhether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was aquick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would notdrive him back. She knew that. 

She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in whichhe was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all bedriven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and huntedalike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hillswould be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down besideit. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush andthe smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe betrapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seeksafety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a deathjust as certain but which they would prefer to face. 

The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he wasriding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would beamong them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him. 

But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, andbefore he will give in and turn back he will be trapped. 

"I am going back to the top of the hill, " she said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I willcatch you before long. "

"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you. Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet, and won't be for some time. "

Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all daylong he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He didnot know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting torun. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have runvery far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of thehill. 

But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mileaway, already past her own home and mounting the long hill. 

She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were allagainst him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chancesstood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew thechances and was ready to measure himself against them. 

"Brom Bones could catch him, I think, " she said as she watched him upthe long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was toolate. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid. Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like aman that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows allabout it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God'sbusiness. I wonder. "

Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow ofthe hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not apretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired fromthe unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all thathe could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as hedisappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on intothe sky. 

Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away tothe right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming, sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight towardher home. 

All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer hadpassed within her memory when the menace of them had not been presentamong the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expectingto some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had neverbefore seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her. 

For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was aliving thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, definedcourse for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox downthe hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the openchase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them andsurround them. 

While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, butthe other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. Thiswas only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweepin any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to thelevel lands and safety. 

The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid frontbeyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which theBishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it andget into French Village before it should cross the road. But she wassure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarelybefore him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this greatlimb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes hewould be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the windwhirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away aheadof the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of theroad. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wanderaimlessly until the fire closed in upon him. 

Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not needher. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they sawthe fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a perilfrom which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could findhim and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he didnot stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make theattempt. 

Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home. For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on hisflanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothinglike that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for hehad always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need thestroke of the whip to madden him. 

Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, redterror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could notunderstand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of risingexcitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this waybefore, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it. I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. Youcan make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear, I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon herhands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she sawthat neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he wasgoing. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleetbody. 

But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw thatred death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a pointjust above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of wherethe fire would strike the road she still did not know whether shecould pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it pantingdown upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches werewhirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse shouldhesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. Thegirl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told himso. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plungedstraight into the blinding blast that swept across the road. 

A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled andreared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But hefelt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged onagain, through the smoke and out into the good air. 

The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missedthem, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared, either. 

Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, andturning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone awaywith his family. The place was not his. The flames were alreadyleaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking firefrom the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, whereeverything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept withthe broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to mattermuch. 

Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across thehillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of herloved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted atthe cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated themen who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it. ) She wantedvengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men takerevenge in the way of men. 

But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of andfor forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. Andshe took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us ourtrespasses, " she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgivethose who trespass against us, " she meant that, too. 

The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not healanother. 

Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fireburst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was buta little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front andto the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the wholehorizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to becoming down upon the whole world. 

She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought ofherself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from theroad and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and outof the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking littlemoment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her therewas a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almostcertain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as shecould see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishopwould still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked BromBones for his brave best. 

 * * * * *

The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through toFrench Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon thesun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of whitesmoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to showthat a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of thesun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet cometo the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advancebut slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all. 

He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mightysweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightestshift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which hewould have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that thefire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, hewould probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting throughsomehow. 

He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ranstraight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreadingsteadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hillbefore him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossedthe road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hillhe would be able to see the road clear before him up to FrenchVillage. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervoushorse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road andmake off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so farfrom the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged. 

Then he came to the top of the hill. 

He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on thatsame day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slightslope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ranstraight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he couldsee the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road. This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had dividedthe fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was stillmoving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of thehill where he stood. 

Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened thanhe had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horseand looked. 

Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire wasmarching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had givenits place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could nothave distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the roadclearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solidwall of fire. 

There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. Theway out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. Butat least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from thefire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed inentirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safeagain. He might even be able to go on his way again to FrenchVillage. 

Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trickupon him. 

His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under theshelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishopdared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust thehorse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pastureland and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way. 

Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might haveexpected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stoodstock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look. 

"I am sorry, boy, " he said gently to the horse. "You have done yourbest. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this. "

He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, twomiles away and a thousand feet below. 

The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down intothe heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away tothe west down through the great trees, travelling faster than anyhorse could have been driven. 

The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinkingmechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in anunbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but witha calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to thewest it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swiftline of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. Onenarrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on thenorth and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully fewminutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless andrunning by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. Witha rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it. 

With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg overthe horse and came heavily to the ground. 

"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance, " he said, as hehurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle. 

He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed. 

"We stay together, then. " And the Bishop mounted again. 

Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing aroundthem there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope. No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still itwas to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applyingequally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ranthrough the grass by his horse's feet. 

One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibilitythat a place might be found where the first fire would have burnedaway a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It mightbe possible to live in that place until the second fire, findingnothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west. 

Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should abishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed tobe nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately inhand. 

Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that hewould die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in hishand. 

But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumband senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner ofthe thing than he could see heroism. 

He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certainmen, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That wasall. He had meant well. God meant better. 

Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistentlywith a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and theBishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in thissquare of fire. 

"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thoughtI'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'llfollow mine. The Gaunt Rocks, " she yelled back over her shoulder, "wecan make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. Butwe won't _burn_!"

Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly undercommand. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time tothink how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horsefollowed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neckpath of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breathor any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top ofwhat seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks. 

They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to BromBones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he sawthat they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extentand perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking downhe saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocksbelow. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak tothe girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of thelines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks. 

It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the sideof the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two cameslowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishopbrought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised RafeGadbeau. 

The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, thencrumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neckand holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man. 

The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognisedthe Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lipsthere came the moan:

_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_

With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in whichthe French people began the telling of their sins in confession. Andshe hurriedly turned away toward the horses. 

She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking ofJeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--theCatholic Church always turning up in everything. 

She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up therebehind that awful veil of red. 

VI

THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD

The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it waspossible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of hiswhich was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country. 

But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw theBishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to knowwhat it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, onlycontinued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"

Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he couldspeak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue ofhis mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one ofthese. 

Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position ofthe body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouthwith his hat. 

Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharpeffort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body heforced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word ofencouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canadahave been drilling into the children for the last three hundredyears. 

Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it workedeasily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At thattime he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table ofsins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses astep in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of theyoung men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in thesawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill countrywould have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting inthe camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down tospend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. TheBishop had heard the story ten thousand times. 

But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, somethingthat would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. Ithad begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at thefeet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For theBishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, justbelow the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, awound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lyingwhere he fell. 

He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolleditself to his mind. 

"I die, Mon Pere, I die, " he began between gasps. "I die. Since theafternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down, if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have laindown to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No. 

"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till Ihad found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here Ibreathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran outfrom the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not runout of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire andfought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. Allthe day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the firewhen I would run out. 

"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with themen who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to thefire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they wentto set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale. 

"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All weredrinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _MonPere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man'sheart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad thatcomes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showedthe knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word tothe law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only tome he said, 'Some day I may need you. '

"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he wasnot a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. Hewould buy the land from the people. 

"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he cameagain. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He mustforce the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You, 'he said, 'I need you. '

"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinchof salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will dothis, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied tomy own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killedthe young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came. He bade me do and I did. 

"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of allsins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And hate goes raging to do all sin. 

"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was alwaysthe face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine. 

"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at therailroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up intothe high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. Iwould not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that lovedme, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go. 

"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went becausethere was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followedinto the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the lastmoment. I do not know. 

"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see. If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must beseen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to bepunished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I wouldhave to take the blame. I would not dare to speak. 

"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And ofthe seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me. I knew. 

"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. Andhis speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay. '

"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along thefringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he wentout into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen othermen watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with alighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light mytorch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, thered flare of the fire running after him. 

"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of firein the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" Witha terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms, gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"

He fell back as the scream died in his throat. 

The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of thewell-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of RafeGadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lipsbegan to form the words of the Act of Contrition. 

As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body inhis arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man. 

Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against theflank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrificforces of this world and the other that were at work about her. Thisworld, with the exception of this little island on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side theflames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place, all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these fewbare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air outof which she must get the breath of life. 

Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen arabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himselfdown to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of themighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop hadcome to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thoughtmuch. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselvesin upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and readingsince her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she hadgrown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had foughtin her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challengedthem all. 

Because she had so recently come under its influence, the CatholicChurch seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed asthough she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another morewonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something justbeyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could notquite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closeddoor beyond it. 

Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible toget. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations, none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just twomen. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a fewmoments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-dayhe had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--forRuth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the firebecause other men were chasing him. 

Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very fewminutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul waspresently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, shewas a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word, straight in the eyes, literally. 

So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearinganything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about themeffectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, highabove the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice ofGadbeau, screaming:

"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"

Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau hadfallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over, apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near untilthe Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up toher ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane. 

But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, solong as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of theshot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there. Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those wordsburning in her mind. 

When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:

"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"

Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, thePrayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads andamong the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not. 

When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, lookinginto the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms onthe tattered breast and straightened the body. 

Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she openedher lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it. Finally she began:

"Bishop, I--I heard--"

"No, child. You heard nothing, " the Bishop interrupted quietly, "nothing. "

Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there lookingdown. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awfulseal. 

The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coatwhich he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of thedead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders thatrained down upon everything. 

Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing attheir horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their armsthrown over the horses' eyes. 

As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the eastand south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But thesharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept themin exquisite, blinded torture. 

The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the firesto the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through thesmoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to berising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting theheavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into thewest. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not aland-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there agreat tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch. 

They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the manlying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the slopinghillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reachLittle Tupper and water if they would have their horses live. Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips andthey knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse. 

Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travelcircuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallentrees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The roadwas impossible because it had largely run through wooded places andthe trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was notdesperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad forwater. 

For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beastnor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, drapedwith the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sentdrifting up into their mouths and eyes. 

They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown levelover holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse wouldsurely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses toany rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them mustbe doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know whatlay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had notreached the lake during the night then it was always a possibilitythat, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up fromthe ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them andthe water. 

When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarilyquickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for thelake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. Theymust go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitudethey could. 

The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying manhad stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday hehad suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroadpeople to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out ofthat part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He wasmoved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drivethat knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try tohide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time ofstress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture oreven by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge. Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meetin French Village would almost certainly confront him there thismorning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must bedoubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day shouldin his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learnedunder the seal of the confessional. 

Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words ofthat last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near theycame to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with hisgun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as shewould to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never underany circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always. 

As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of thecountry sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. Therewas not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little FrenchVillage had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completelyaround the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn itup in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself outalong the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward thewest, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there wouldbe no more fire in this region. 

"Would the people make their way down the river, " the Bishop asked;"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

"I don't think they did either, " Ruth answered as she scanned the lakesharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, andI wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and wentthrough the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and thatway they could save some things. If they had run away they would havehad to drop everything. "

The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up theirears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruthwas right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or sixlarge rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of thelogs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at thesawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must havestood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided bysuch help as the people could give it with boards and poles, wasmoving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been. 

The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep throughthe ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village andwatched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing forthem to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other sideof the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with thatdumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back andbegin their nests over again. 

For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horsesdrink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts. When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling fromthe rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts wereemptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must becarried off. 

They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl withwonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these twopeople must have come straight through the fire. But when FatherPonfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a greatglad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors. Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the longnight. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that allwas well!

Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes theirrace what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging hisblessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He wasinfinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They werehomeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it hadneeded but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unboundedconfidence that God was good, that the world was right again. 

The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race, stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kindof people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were notunmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Sometwo or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory andbattle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that thiswas the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmarethrough which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was apart of the strange things that they had always half believed abouthim. 

Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would dragthe Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from thefire?

The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his ownimprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it bythe quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translatedfreely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming ofRafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They noddedtheir heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew whothe man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched outthe wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? Godwas good. No?

Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirtsof the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eagerquestions and asking questions of her own. There was just onequestion that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from herlips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them aboutJeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him, must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But someunnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared notput her crying question into words. 

Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people weresaying, asked:

"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?"

"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly, " Ruthanswered without looking up. 

Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whitingshot Rogers. "

"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whitingdid _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!"

The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her andblinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The youngman, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

"It's nothing-- Let me go. "

Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand fromher arm. 

Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herselfin among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would belikely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, asense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling thatshe stood among those who could have understood gave her strength anda feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have hadamong her own kind. 

But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm anddrew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth foundit difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly Frenchgirl she had met in the early summer. 

"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die, " the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruthsharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close?No?"

"Yes, the fire was all around, " Ruth answered, quaking. 

"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms. "

"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"

"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so. "

But the girl was not to be evaded in that way. 

"I know that, " she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he_confess_--about Rogers?"

"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. Icouldn't--"

"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questionedswiftly. 

"Nothing at all, " Ruth answered, relieved. 

"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly. 

"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that. "

"I know you are lying, " Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I donot know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You areCatholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometimeyou will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred inus. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you aquestion and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will besilent--and that will be just as bad. "

Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did noteven raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuringlook to the girl would be an admission that she must not make. 

"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! Youcannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul, " said the girl in alow, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know thatyou heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember. " She drew Ruthclose to her and almost hissed into her ear:

"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away. 

Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of frightand bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could notgrapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind. 

This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her loveand her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from thedark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes givento those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girlhad seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and hadplucked it out before Ruth's very eyes. 

The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She hadbroken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with themost terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the mostawful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret hadescaped her!

She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she hadrepeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that theother girl had taken her secret from her. 

And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into thefuture and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her. Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraidto speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had everknown. 

And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one thathad been hidden even from herself. She had said:

"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting. "

In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she hadnever known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up inthe eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for thedead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of herown beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cainupon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over thehills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love!Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would loveforever!

He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearabletaunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her ownlips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thoughtof such a thing?

But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. Shecould not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out thebursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, noteven to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by thefaintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than hisand other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able tolook into his eyes and say:

I _know_ you did not do it. 

Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that sheknew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man. It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her tocrush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could notmeet them, could not cope with them. 

Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where BromBones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, herface buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed herhands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted theygave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that shewould need strength above all things, took what was given and silentlyfaced the galling weight of the burden that was hers. 

The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The firstthing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold outwhere they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villageson the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walkingover ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north itwould mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and havewater at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might comeinto the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help. 

Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they dothere? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothingleft for them here but the places where their homes had been, but atleast they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had allpassed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-strickenalike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation, would here bind them together and give them a common strength for anew grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the fouror five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowvilleor from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here. 

The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawingfamily groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Alreadythese mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing aroundthem and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circledrawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindlyof eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth fromnondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. Itappeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision storeuntil the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, toeach one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was allpitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for thoserefugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, hethought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured toscanty living. 

The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put somethingbefore them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of allthings it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merelywait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried intheir hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort ofshelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kindwould cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought upor until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of thelake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. Butit would put heart into them to see at least something, anything, begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes. 

Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holdingdesperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wadingthem through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched towhat, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from whichmessages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. Theybore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things thatwere immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the littlevillage. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the mengathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names wouldmean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would wellknow that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worthwhile, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For theBishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardyrelief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makesthe life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it wascharacteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes ofpenniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligationsupon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel ofhis unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentaryupon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single oneof the notes he signed that day. 

All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs anddriftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks andjoists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikesfrom the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night camedown over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads ofwomen and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raisedcheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new FrenchVillage that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. ThenFather Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to theGood Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from farChicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn hadnever been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old andyoung, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the liltof the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandaland whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud andunashamed. 

Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilightbrooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan anddropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth. 

Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laidhis head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered theMysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through hisfingers and unfolded their story to him. 

Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the farslope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in thegrass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone onpast them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier ofbarren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknowncountry. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit fortravel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodginglike hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--beforethem, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fireand gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them. They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run withthem all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them throughall the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all theblistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorchingthirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them, torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep andwide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew thatit was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lakecame up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air fromit cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up totaunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancythat they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks. This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, allmight as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who hadyesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scatteredaround the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who mightcome out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burntground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitenedhillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And, for these two men, to be seen meant to die. 

So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had beenbeginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily downto the water. 

They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge ofthe lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink nomore. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested untilthey could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirstand rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realisednow that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken upso much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everythingelse. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knewthat if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they wouldhave to have food at once. 

Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now diedout there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There wasfood over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now itdid not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any greatthing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the onething that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else. They would go over there and take the food in the face of all theworld!

Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at afew wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself. There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did notremember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up somebaked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eatthem, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!

Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothingto be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands aroundhim. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of thematter. 

A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. Hecarried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. Atperil of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pilethat was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women andchildren slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridleand tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a canof meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into BromBones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside. 

A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kickingthe embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse andfired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped andplunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout, faithful heart. 

In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting andshooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women andchildren screamed and wailed their fright within the little building. 

The two men running with the food for which they had been willing togive their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing menrunning wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured andhustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire. 

They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of menwhose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with themost terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had beenthirsting to kill them. The hour had come. 

"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves. " OldErskine Beasley spoke the sentence. 

A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry thatsuggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey. 

Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, layinghands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he hadcaught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he hadcried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and hespoke now calmly, as one assured. 

"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We knowthat, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, forthey planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shallonly these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silencethese two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

"We'll be sure of these two, " said a sullen voice in the crowd. 

"True, " returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you thereare others greater than any of these who have come into the hillsrisking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greaterones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in theend. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without athought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all thistrouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, myfriends and my neighbours, " he went on raising his hand, "I pledge youthat that one man will be found and that he will do right by you. 

"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of thevillage--and let them confess before the world and to him on paperwhat they know of this crime and of those who commanded it. "

A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for thetime. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was broughtforward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to situpon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in hislong hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told. 

They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail ofall they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient forthe ending of the story, that they might go on with their task. 

The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must savethese men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and aChristian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certainman, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something ofthat story which he himself could but must not tell. 

The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when thestory of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means surethat he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spokesimply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At thefirst move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out theirintention, he said:

"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. Iwill prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall notmove these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bulletsmust pass through me. 

"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it isjust one thing--Revenge. "

"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd. 

"It is _not_ my business, " said the Bishop solemnly. "It is thebusiness of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? HaveI no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe allthe same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. Andnever in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doingthis minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of myfathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon yoursouls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have yousweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands andsay: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!

"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done. And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!believe me now! You shall see right!"

The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the menabout him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through hisfeeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad. 

He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them. 

Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside herdead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had donehis noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerfulwords, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to thisgrief. 

He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes intothe dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again consideredthe things of God and His world. 

VII

THE INNER CITADEL

"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolutesatisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully andwith prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of Augusttwentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of along-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murderedman, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shallnot only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could havedone the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouthsof his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes, actual eye-witnesses of the crime. "

In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the DistrictAttorney of the county was opening the case for the State againstJeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who haddied by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of BaldMountain. 

From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat ofRacquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of thehill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of thevillages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whoselives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. JudgeLeslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made itplain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogersmust have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge theguilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murderitself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had beendoing at the time. 

For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killedjust a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a littleof the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned overin the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to thesepeople. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which hadsuffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossibleto select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayerof Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villagesof Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew thata man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire hadstarted at about the same time and place. But few people had any clearversion of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to theidentity of the slayer. 

There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunatefor Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines ofRacquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same manwho only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before theSenate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroadagainst the lawless people of the hills. He had given the DistrictAttorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury whowould be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. Forthis was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people ofthe hills against the U. & M. Railroad. 

Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of itsrising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroadsystem that had spread itself beneficently over the county and thathad given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of theNorth. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it wasnot in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave thecounty in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroadsaw to it that only men personally known to its officials should havepublic office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench. And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well forthe very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it. 

The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life ofRacquette County was so complex and varied that it extended toevery money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible butimpenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in everydirection and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tellwhere it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines ofinfluence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of theattorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand theypassed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whosemoney and brain dominated the whole transportation business of theState. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitolat Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to theyoungest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune fromtheir influence. 

Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procuredthe setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill peoplehomeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, beimpossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in anycounty of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the wayof criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper androused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public. The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a mutteredand vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in aspectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a countercharge. 

Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the GrandJury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictmentagainst Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They hadfound that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon apeaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of hiscompany. He had been found shot through the back of the head and thecircumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature anddisposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young manwho for months had been leading a stubborn fight against therailroad. 

The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in JudgeLeslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind ofthe public with this case until the people should have had time toforget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of therailroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold onlyone thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder caseinto that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise. 

The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; thewell-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury haddone its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecutingattorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident powerwas moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge andthis jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in theway of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught inthe act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it toappear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury asjustification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. Thefate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whetheror not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would beallowed to enter. 

And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were alreadymade up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had beenat first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubtwas his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did notdeny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on thevery scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any onefor doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since hisconviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what roomwas there to hope for his acquittal?

The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they hadbeen working night and day to put a roof over their families beforethe cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. Theyhad no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, andthey had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--everyword of which would count against them. They had come down determinedthat he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as itwere, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which themachinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them. There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idleand glum, waiting for the end. 

Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment bythe District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain ofcircumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morningon Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening holdupon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that nightand had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his motherthere safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had beenhorrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face ofthe fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. Noword had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactlywhat had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. Hehad wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, ofcourse. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he wouldhave told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey wasaware that she was the only person who did or would believe him. 

He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to goup into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wanderingsomewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers. The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gottenquickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroadpeople had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. Thewarrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reachedLowville. 

When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before theGrand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he mighthave had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever hewas, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. Hisown friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath. 

His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just tothe right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly atthem with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mothersmiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with atwinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep intothe big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of themorning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly andunaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged tolift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, toconquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulnessof everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once thepride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he hadkissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--thathe would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again. And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie withhim. 

Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heartin her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trailof evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had shebeen able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, thethought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of thehills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heartof her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of herboy brought to this pass because of that man. 

Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with hismother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clungto him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men. The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely tosee her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he hadseen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there hadbeen not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as heremembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking himsquarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget thefoolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. Inthat pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seenthere not the love of the little girl that he had known but theunbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself tohim for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women ofearth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts. 

It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of hiscell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcelylistened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she hadheard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiarwith it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not likeRuth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know theexact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have beensatisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own. 

Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at hisheart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be thatshe had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe itand could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had sheblinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!

He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Mightnot even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have beenacting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! Thegirl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it wasonly--!

But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth wasno actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world hadever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into hereyes. 

He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cellrapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberatelyput his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little timetogether entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made hisstory unimportant. 

She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop musthave gone straight through it from their home in its front line to therear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey hadheard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made manywonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of theirdeliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the younggirl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from theangels. 

Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed toone or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there wereother men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered RafeGadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey atRogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogerswas intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the lineof that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullethad struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head. 

Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort ofmysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his biddingunwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there underthe excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would becharged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and placeto rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffreycaught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that wouldfit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into manyblind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he atlast came upon the truth--and stuck to it. 

Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and hadalmost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruthand the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence. He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they weregoing to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. TheBishop _knew_. 

When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what hehad expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and herconfidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturingdoubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even hismother. Ruth _knew_. 

That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of whatshe was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a veryserious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter withanybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speakunnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need, she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough. 

When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched himas he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had neverhad more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of detailsin his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the darkhad now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive asthose of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop'shand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those ofa man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keephis faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man whowished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and wasobliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all. No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop_knew_. 

It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had beento see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was anofficial in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must notspeak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocentman. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop wouldspeak. 

So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. Sohe had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself. He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. Theresult was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face ofthe incontestable facts which would be brought against them, wouldcertainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attentionto them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heartfelt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, ofdefence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had madehimself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in thekeeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and whowould give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man ofGod, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these twowould speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by theconcise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecutingattorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the mostterrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who wasalways absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from themoment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear. 

The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the factthat his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths againsthim, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme andplan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here andthere--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all thesethings bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But theycould not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth_knew_; the Bishop _knew_. 

The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last. 

Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called. 

The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for thoughhe had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well knownthat he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made noattempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allowhim to give only direct answers to the questions put to him. 

Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of ananswer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night beforethe twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band ofmen had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered tostop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confinehimself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrestedfor contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temperand the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around thecourtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only theanswers that the prosecutor forced from him. 

"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked. 

"Yes. "

"Did you hear two shots fired?"

"No. "

"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"

"Yes. "

"Did you examine it?"

"Yes. "

"Had it been fired off?"

"Yes. "

"Excused, " snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears, came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answershad made the most damaging sort of evidence. 

Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. Hecalled several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad andassociated in one way or another with the murdered man in his effortsto get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they were ready to give details and opinions which might havebeen favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly toanswering with a word his own carefully thought out questions. 

With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of causeand effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills tooffer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to themoment when the two had faced each other that morning on BaldMountain. 

He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and opposeRogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of afamily well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had beenquick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep thepeople from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be afailure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man whocould get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out athis word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at histerms. 

Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that theywould not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave themthe word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Didthey have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actualoptions on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by theirpromises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what werereally options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back intheir own interest? Yes. 

The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to showthat it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroadthat had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, infact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain betweenJeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully doneand drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which baldnegative and affirmative answers invariably carry. 

He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the twomen. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of theway at a time in the early summer when many of the people about FrenchVillage had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had beenobliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger. He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed. 

The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on BaldMountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills duringthe afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidentsand knew what men had said to each other. He now called MyronStocking. 

"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"was the question. 

"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"

"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney. 

"Yes, " the witness admitted sullenly. 

"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"

"Yes. "

"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"

"He followed me, " the witness began. But the Judge rapped warninglyand the attorney yelled:

"Yes or no?"

"Yes. "

"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"

"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with hisgavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:

"Did you hear a shot?"

"Yes. "

"Did you hear two shots?"

"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voicewas smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He wasfinally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he wasasked:

"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"

"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff. '"

"What else did you say?"

"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we hadthe chance. '"

"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back. 

"Yes. "

"One question more and I will excuse you, " said the attorney, with ashow of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify againstyour friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killedRogers?"

To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, thatthe answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply, reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution, that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. Thewitness found himself forced to answer a simple yes. 

One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning werecalled. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced togive his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whitingout of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground ofthe murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing. 

On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that hemight only examine them on the facts which they had stated to theDistrict Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses downabsolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in theirtestimony that could be attacked. 

With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the lastwitness go. The State promptly rested its case. 

Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifullyinadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain offacts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were inthe main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only oftheir long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him, of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving theoptions to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute goodfaith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these menhad been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had plannedits campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every manwho could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up tothe tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken fromthe record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence hadlittle or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the singleobjections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tendto reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go intothe record. 

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course ofthe trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village. The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedlystudied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered abovehim. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that wasgoing on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop. 

The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, inthe way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boywho stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had firstheard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, evenhad he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could beconvicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was indefence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress ofthe trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated theseriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold whichthey had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County. 

He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason whyJeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. Hewould associate himself and his own good name with the things thatJeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before mentogether. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words wouldbe swept aside as irrelevant. 

One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Thismorning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered atlearning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by thelake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were beingbrought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial. 

Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting wasnot known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by theconnivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession inhis pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning themurder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. Hesaw that he would not be allowed to do so. 

One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. JeffreyWhiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man orwoman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did notkill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He toldme so. 

The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy uponthis course which had brought him here into this court and into theshadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actuallyfired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? Hewould. 

And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through achain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of thesecircumstances, in a way responsible? He was. 

Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "RafeGadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus saveJeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more, would do. 

And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what wasnecessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop, be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin ofJeffrey Whiting? He would. 

Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?He would not. 

There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break theseal and let those nine words escape his lips. 

There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mindas he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boywho sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsiblefor him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for thedead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up thereand defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was boundby the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternalsalvation of men's souls. 

But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. Hiscourse was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothingto be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between thegreater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be groundbetween the working of the two. 

If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordainedthe salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore thesalvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of theconfessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through historture, waiting. 

When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his placestanding beside the chair that was set for him. 

At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. Hetold of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeatedwhat he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch thethings that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearlybefore the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised anddirected Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done. 

The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But hesaw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerfuleffect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressingDardis, he said:

"Is this testimony pertinent?"

"It is, if Your Honor pardon me, " said the Bishop, turning quickly. "It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed thecrime charged, any more than I could have done so. "

The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legalphraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury. He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of hisride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in thenight at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. Theyhad escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written andsealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would readthis to the jury. 

He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past theopening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was thestory of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court. 

He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, heasked:

"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"

"No, Your Honor. But there are--"

"It is irrelevant, " interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot gobefore the jury. "

The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more. 

Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for hisclient--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confessionto the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if therewas not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stoodwaiting for his further questions. There might be some way or somehelp, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a partof the real confession. He said quickly:

"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"

"I was. "

"What did he say to you?"

Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager andconfident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here wasthe hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!

The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then helooked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:

"Nothing. "

"That will do. Thank you, Bishop, " said Dardis in a low, brokenvoice. 

Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence diedslowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishophad _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!

As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw theterrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she werequestioned about that night, she must do as he had done. 

Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I dothat?

Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happenlike this! How could any one think that she would ever stand likethis, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands, and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him toher and life!

She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she carefor that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer shehad lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wishedfor a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was nogood to him or to any one now?

Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then shewould be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. Shehad never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knewthat that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off theoutward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free tospeak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal ofthe secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off theChurch, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty andunbreakable across her lips. 

That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what shesaw held her. 

What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was notthe dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was nota poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony andfear of death. 

What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What shesaw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of Godfrom which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never bedisturbed. 

As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes whichshe had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--theterrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. Andthough the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting. 

How well that girl knew!

Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had notbeen able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since hehad dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he hadbecome more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there wasalways a chance that the dying man had said something to her. 

"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was broughtto him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir. "

"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"

"No, sir. "

Then he flashed the question upon her:

"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"

Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing towhat followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, aterrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief. A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I droppedand shot him, shot Rogers as he stood. _

Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadelof his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the wordthat would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time. Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad thatthe Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak. 

The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brainand down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shoutthem out to the ends of the earth!

But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

"Nothing. "

Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand. 

Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat. 

_Ruth_ had _lied_!

The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him. 

VIII

SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?

The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up thestreet toward the little church. He had not been the same man sincehis experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They hadaged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering andsuperhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had brokenthe spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and thevital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up inhim. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He hadroused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has alreadyreached almost the full allotted span of life may do these thingswithout showing the outward effects of them. But these things hadstruck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quickspirit of the man within. 

The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into thespiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given thealternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he wouldhave offered the few years that might be his, without question orhalting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled orthought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he hadnever blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole toreceive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge forthe sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded byany perplexities or confusion. 

Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forcedupon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. Thesnapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would bea matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world hadnothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard hissecret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous, battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the gloryof living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Neverhad he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been sodirect, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to doright, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. Butthe thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could nothave done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure. 

But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come tothat issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstanceswhich had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? Itdid not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had donefoolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to dounwisely is much the same as to do wickedly. 

What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that hehad advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there hethought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spokenfoolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he hadacted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? Hecould only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart. 

He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sankheavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his hearthe cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority. 

When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand shesank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour theother girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hungupon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showedthemselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew thatRafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and thatJeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would becalled as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it atthe last moment. 

Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for shehad seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a verylong time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talkinggaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothingleft of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But thatmemory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to thisother girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? Whatwould that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was notlikely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish totell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came toher of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep ondenying?

Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. Shedid not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew itwho had been born to the Faith. 

Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it wasno place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden awayin her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fearhung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hintmight be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had asuperstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not behidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. Sheknew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these dayswhen the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogersand hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting'sstory believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial andhad sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly toevery word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearingthe name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name andhis memory from the blight of his deed had become more than areligion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her ownthought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in herworld which Rafe Gadbeau had filled. 

When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning ofthe Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him thathe must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They mightas well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tellRafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop. 

But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might dounder the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbrokenupon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. Shewould love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die forher!

When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl inthe stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girlstammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to askher further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver inpain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she sawthe hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart ofCynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could notknow what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who couldsuffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her loveunder foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steadyword--"Nothing. "

Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at thetorture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herselfat the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from thestand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that shemust tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For CyntheCardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like afrightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street. 

She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to thecourt. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand, she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cyntheunderstood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he wastroubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have businesswith God. 

She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw theBishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken. 

He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisperat his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse. _

The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. Buthere was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrentialrush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishoplistened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor thepower to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing itskeeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end ofit would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that wouldshow that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and ofBeaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow thethread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly, the Bishop prompted gently. 

"And now? my daughter. "

"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved RafeGadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name Iwould die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _MonPere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there beforemen and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There isanother way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. Iwould have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do manythings that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I wentto keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would havekilled that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When Isaw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I amguilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and savehimself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in thepath of the fire because he feared those other men. 

"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that Iam the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I willtell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straightstory I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe. And they will not hurt a girl much, " she said, dropping back upon hernative shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not carewho killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And thecourt will believe, as I shall tell it. "

"But, my daughter, " said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not betrue. We must not lie. "

"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself, " the girl argued swiftly, evidentlyseparating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in hispublic walk, "he himself, on the stand--"

The girl stopped abruptly. 

The Bishop held the silence of the grave. 

"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth, " she began. "_MonPere_, I cannot! I--!"

"Let us consider, " the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he hadtold this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed. Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"

"To escape Hell, " said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of hergrief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, shehad known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had lovedhim. Would always love him. 

"We will not speak of Hell, " said the Bishop gently. "In that hour hewould have seen the right. He would have told you to tell. "

"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself, " she retortedquickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelatein person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound MoralTheology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leaveto speak. "

The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground. 

"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"

"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"

"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who wasblind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where agreat light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not knowhere--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He standsalone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God andcries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?

"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the openplace. Would he come back to the world?

"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind andanother man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forwardwith that debt unpaid. '

"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one inall that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that noneloved you who will pay the debt?'

"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debtwill be right; my God, let me go. '"

The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully puttogether. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar toher race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little breakof joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved inspite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins oflife. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusionsthat every woman craves for and clings to. 

"This, " the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are toconsider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must nothear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinionsor the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great openspace, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Himall. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people, who do not matter at all?

"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake ofRuth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, fromwhere he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learnedtells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. Hewould have you tell. "

"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale, " said the girl simply as she rosefrom her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage. "

The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouseand sent for Dardis. 

"This girl, " he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think youwould do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her ownway. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break herdown. "

Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God. 

As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been putupon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tellwhich the jurors had not already heard in one form or another. Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. Hehad not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason todoubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would bebelieved here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed bythe facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But therewas some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which heclung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that asingle man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy talethat he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tellwhat might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued. 

Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell hisstory he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did notbelieve his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it wastrue. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and swornthat they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, aman he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. Thatman had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him. 

It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did notconsider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling ofit. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was theoutcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty commondeaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one bigthing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and tookfrom him his interest in every other fact in the world. 

Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her lifetold a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never hadreason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have saidthat the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet shehad stood up there and lied. 

For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishlygiven herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had givenup her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!

It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it. 

He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question whichmeant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not haveescaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which shecould have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that shewas not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope oflife. 

Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. Whatwas the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazeddumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision. 

He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until someone told him to be seated. He answered the questions put himautomatically, without looking either at the questioner or at thejury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watchingthe alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-daywondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would heconfess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had racedforward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He lookedvacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his wordsstricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed noresentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had runaway from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he didnot seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mentionthe fire again. 

At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime offalling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Nowthe man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killedRogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forwardto look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away. 

Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not ruleout the word. ) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bulletgoing just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was asimple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirelycredible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner ofJeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was notthe manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of hislife. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and wasnow living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping manmight have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, thoughpuzzled by the manner of the recital. 

Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey toany attention to the story that he had told. At each question he wentback to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenlywithout any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to makehim say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of thestory. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horriblefact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of herchurch. 

When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he wasagain the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of thiswholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called. He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squireswould begin his speech at once. 

He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom hehad seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau'sgirl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything, and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor littlething look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here tobring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at thegirl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matteranyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not letthem hurt her. 

Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe againstinterruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to saynothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogersand nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her torelate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the verybeginning:

"Four years ago, " she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man waskilled in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. RafeGadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not knowwho had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knifeand traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept theknife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for theprice of his silence. 

"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some oneto help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. Heshowed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him todo, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attackthe young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And RafeGadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put uponhim. 

"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, andthat will be the end of all. ' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, wewill marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will neversee you again, and we will not know that he ever lived. '"

Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself thetragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not havetold her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story washere needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop'sadvice, to let her get through with it in her own way. 

"But it was not time for us to marry yet, " she went on. "Then came themorning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps ofmy aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string tohang up in the hot sun to dry. " The Judge turned impatiently on hisbench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazedangrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it notimportant, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter theJudge gave her the most rigid attention. 

"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that hewas troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and saidone bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message fromRogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and sixhorses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know, ' he said, 'though Ican guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe. '

"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, Ido not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we willget away to Beaupre. Promise me. '

"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him. '

"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end. 

"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But Ifollowed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had donewhat they intended and we could run away together with clean hands. 

"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside andclimbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come backthere together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They woulddo nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would findRafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl thatnight. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I wouldhave killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me muchsuffering. 

"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But thatRogers kept him always near him. 

"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a littleway from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did nothear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has madeup his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear. 

"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he camerunning back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned. 

"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. Ilooked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face. The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The youngWhiting had not fired at all. 

"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _monRafe_, ' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in thenight. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. Nonewill ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come. '

"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him atleast to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did notwish to be separated from him in this world or the next. 

"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those othermen, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind himand the fire. "

She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Herstory was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voicerose into a cry of farewell as she told the end. 

"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up andrunning on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and Godtook him away. 

"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe. "

Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of thestory. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in itsnaïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human natureto understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easilyher own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any moreconnected elaborations he might try to make her give. 

Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always beena useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced ofthe guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring intocourt. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than apersonal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case. But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story wastrue. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But itwas true. 

His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing. The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leadingnowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury. 

It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember thefacts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to putaside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that theprisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was notnimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless underit. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stoodaside to grapple with that one astounding thing. 

The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of thesehampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking anddiscussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. Alldemocracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming toa conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the countyhad said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling. 

He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more crediblethan that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All hadtold the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glidedsmoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act. No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that. 

He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on thecomparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of thejurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which hehad intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear viewof the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his factsby the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guiltwhich he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thingclearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal. 

Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to anagreement. 

The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was. 

Jeffrey Whiting stood up. 

The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

"Not guilty. "

The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his namewas called, but one after another the men arose and answered grufflyfor acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running fortheir horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy littleDanton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that somethingreal had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the wholepolitical power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of therailroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little lovestory of an ignorant French girl from the hills. 

Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been aprisoner and brought him to his mother. 

Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as hestooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that allthe years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not thesprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to himfainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shakeoff. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what theyhad done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in hisheart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they haddone to her in these four weeks and in these two days. 

And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more tohurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could havedone. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her allthat racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religionof hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck towhat had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name. 

Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon herwith a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girlas a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voicehe said brutally:

"You lied!"

Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words. Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, couldnot tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under theawful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked hislife and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knewit. All the world could talk freely about what she had done exceptonly herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his headdown to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into hisear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been ableto speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as theline of death. 

When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight. 

The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as hecame out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him intothe midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which theyhad caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people werenot much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph andtheir noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness whichhe was quick to notice. 

During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of hiswaking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battlethat yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, andonce more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a clickinto the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed hishorse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridgeand out toward the hills, the families who had come down from thenearer hills in wagons stringing along behind. 

When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the fullnews of the last four weeks. 

It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happeningshas been obliged to turn aside here and there, following thevicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had neverfor a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional courseupon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroadmust get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lyingalong the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles mustbe gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. Theincidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance onlyas they contributed to the general result. 

Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. Therewere other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senatecommittee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely anobstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it byprocuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless forthe most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anythingthey could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, noanimus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been asimpersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction. Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purelyincidental. 

Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards asan instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had beenRogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had beenused for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. JeffreyWhiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad hadhoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these thingswere but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carryingthrough of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end. 

Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the oldPiercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hillsduring the four weeks of his removal from the scene. 

The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people ofthe hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroadwould do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had movedright on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learnedinstantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use thatas a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that wasonly a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its mainbusiness. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with whatseemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the landswhich the railroad coveted. 

They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun torebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The wholepeople were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scatteringwhich the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it wasworth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through thethin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farmingfor many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that JeffreyWhiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely tobe convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would winin the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they couldnot see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep thepeople in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suitthe railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one thatwas now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun tofear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was anenemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomedthem. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised topunish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark ofofficials. 

The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were stilldown in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scanthelp of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtainready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were notroused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon thembefore the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch ofwinter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had aclaim, for the mere privilege of living. 

When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which hadbeen boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he hadthought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day nowran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger anda thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he nowput it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushingblow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with itonly for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but thefull desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. Thehills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the redsun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where theautumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes shouldhave stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing butblackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on theeast, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circleof ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in theeye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people herewere still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seenbuilt, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding whatshelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There wereenough of these latter to show that French Village would live again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit andgood faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names werewritten and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictlyneedful. 

Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves fromsleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feedthem. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the menand to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of CyntheCardinal. 

The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terriblesacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl agreat deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. Hestruck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush thememory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His bodyhad no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merelyserved to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyondhim. 

At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the nighthad told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at therailroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take fromthem the little that was left to them. They had been fools that theyhad not struck in the beginning when they had first found that theywere being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the earlysummer their homes would not have been burned and they would not benow facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter. 

Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had notstruck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of thelaw. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hillsin ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end ofthe rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as hecould, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and theirown. 

If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen fordays, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into thehills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothingwas being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight forthem and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager tofight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. Ifthe railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it, were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it wastheir own?

If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad cleardown below the line of the hills and put the work back for months. They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have tofight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up againstthem. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia, but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more thanmilitia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and theirpeople!

Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And inthe end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys ofashes where their homes had been, took what food the French peoplecould spare them, and mounted silently behind him. 

Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes ofmany of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain theycould upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southerndivide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad atLeavit's bridge. 

IX

THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD

The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's callfor help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit'sCreek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced downthe line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up theties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness. 

Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literallyfor their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. Theypreferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with theirwrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. Theworkmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take nochances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence andrioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This waswar. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines andbolted down the line, carrying panic before them. 

In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head hadridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costlyconstruction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in thehills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a singlerail in all the hill country where they were masters. 

The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright. That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally incharge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenlythe tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting allsorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had thetelegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no morefrightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs inAdirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swearin as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget theconsideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men. They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible numberof fighting men upon the line at once. 

Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building inNew York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw thegravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it. He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities, who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in thisbattle. 

He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. Heordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set themin motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that theGovernor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governorbridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fictionthat he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever ofthis illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and bywhose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the greatrailroad system that covered the State would again be necessary inorder that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great mansent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment ofthe National Guard for service in the hills. 

Before the second night three companies of the militia had passedthrough Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orderswere to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hillmen that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried andimprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristicof the great power which in those days ruled the State that when ithad outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attainits ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinionin favour of itself. 

Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods aboveMilton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat carscome creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of thehills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fiftymiles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settledcountry. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run intheir blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carrytheir work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their owncountry where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper. Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety forthem even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun. They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge ofthe hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where hehad started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundredwell-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they couldhold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any forcethat might be sent against them. 

But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility wasalready at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had drivenhim onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near himinto this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dullhate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave himtime to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were notprofessional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to bedone. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they shouldcome up here to fight for it. Why did they come?

They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usuallyhad very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men, for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central partof the State. The militia companies had attracted them because thearmouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, becauseuniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons ofveterans and the military tradition was strong in them. JeffreyWhiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things. He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot downwithout mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word ofcommand and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If therailroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was ableto send these boys up here on its own business, then other people wereto blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to donothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; theywere not to be blamed. 

His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into thehills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between twohills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line ofwhat had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers whowould be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up intothe defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down bythe hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing witha hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. Butto shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many ofthem probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outingin the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate. Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they wereto expect. 

He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take uptheir march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He wassurprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the lineonly as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had notthought that they would go away from their cars. 

Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect therebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straightinto the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroadwas not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had calledupon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. Hismen had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. Thisthing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end therewould be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops anddrive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almostridiculous. But that would not be the end. 

The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it mustand would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did notdeceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubtas to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. Therailroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law ofhumanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency. It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yetthe law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroaditself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be setin motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid theirdebt. 

But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had notforeseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail hadgiven him an insight into realities that years of growth andobservation of things outside might not have produced in him. He hadbeen given time to see that some things are insurmountable, thatthings may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persistand go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. JeffreyWhiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he hadled these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this madraid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he nowrealised had been his from the start. They had thought that theycould accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning avictory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of theState would intervene to settle the differences between them andtheir enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that themoment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of theState would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. Therewould be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If theysurrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed forvarying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, someof them would be killed and injured and in one way or another allwould suffer in the end. 

He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him withstartling clearness now. He had led them into this without lettingthem see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seenit. 

There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scatteredthemselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. Andif he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almostsatisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing todo. 

He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancingsoldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. Hehad not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They mustleave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouthsas to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down andgive himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custodythey would not bother so very much about bringing the others topunishment. 

His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did notunderstand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. Therewas an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing orcapturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word, without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the frontof the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer andfoxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of thesoldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one ofthem was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it hadbegun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was asthough they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be noadvance. 

These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint whichthe hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volleyproved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadlywas the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in thewoods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their armsor run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddennesswith which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning. 

Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for themto halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars. For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance orwould put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold theground on which they stood. 

Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowlycreeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping downwho did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew weresheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to befighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase ofthe human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, andhe knew that they were an enemy of a character far different fromthose harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side ofa hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highestof the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip fromtheir sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering themuntil they should have tracked them down one by one and eithercaptured or killed them all. 

These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. Theystepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thinline of men to either side. 

Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, tooktheir lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left thetracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a longline that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of thehills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down theroadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officersevidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours andbegan spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. Itwas perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have beenbetter done if he and his companions had planned it for their owncapture. 

There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; menwell armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with arailroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire Statebehind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men afterthese if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds ofother men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhapsalready on their way. He saw the end. 

Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men. If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated theywould be hunted down one by one. 

Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where theirhomes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance, begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might haveknown that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they werebreaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in frontof them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them fromannihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. Therewas nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life alongwith theirs as dearly as possible. 

 * * * * *

The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Menwho had followed the course of things through the past months, menwho knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaperhad dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men upthere had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreedquietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing thatcould have been done. The injury they had done the railroad wouldamount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would givethe railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would bedriven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess. There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomedthemselves. 

The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the Statewho did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up amoment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathisevaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attackedthe sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad. Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who couldtell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State, went back again to their business. 

The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before ablow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he waslistening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slowto anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutelyheedless and reckless of consequences. 

He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up inthe causes and consequences of what had happened and what washappening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with thepeople and only for the people. 

He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride downthrough the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, thegathering of the forces of the State to punish. 

Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein JosephWinthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of nomoment now. 

One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could givethe word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W. Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had setall these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised inevery act of those which had driven the people to this madness, hiswill and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in thehills. 

Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfishbravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like ofwhich the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which hadrevealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no manwould have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of farawayyouth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do notrise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility tomake it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise tothose heights. 

After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise andcowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the freshheart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul ofClifford W. Stanton again be touched?

Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against thepeople of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into theoffice of Clifford Stanton. 

Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than thelatter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned upthe fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke andmoved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton actedwith a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. Thespiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which hadchiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of willpower was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there wasa certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the facehad all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws ofthe trap had set upon the accomplished fact. 

Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known themanywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappearedalmost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys atHarvard together, though not of the same class. They had been togetherin the Civil War, though the nature of their services had beeninfinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually andincidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other nowvirtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip uponhimself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of thestrongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test outthe other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit ofhis strength. 

"It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busymen. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I neednot tell you that. "

The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chairquietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing thelast few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the lastmonth that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in thesteady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time onpreliminaries. 

"I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton, " he began. "It is avery strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I musttell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question. That will be my whole business. "

The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spokeuntil he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into hisstory. 

"One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone. My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service atCross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and wouldbe crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thoughtI knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance thatseparated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path whichwould have been impossible for troops in order. 

"I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and camedown in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the easternside of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would bewith my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry camepelting over a rise in the road behind me. 

"I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road andwaited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behindthem came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederatehorses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not faroff. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, Iimagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I hadleft the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threwthemselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. Theywere in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yardsback on the narrow road. 

"I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men. But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, asthey came yelling around the turn of the road. 

"For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw, there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederatesbroke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of thefight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other alieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the onlyman living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole ofthat story. 

"The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the onething that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Whythey had been kept in the same command I do not know. 

"Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently theslightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain, attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggledthere, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain, swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latterdrew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle Ido not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised tolunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he hadmade no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen hisarm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant'seyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into hisface. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the nowbreaking line of Confederates. 

"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravelyrefrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw. "

Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no signof hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:

"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day. "

"I knew, " said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the samebrave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were thatday?"

For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at somethingthat was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon himout of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any manto face him with it?

He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:

"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my lifeas it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell methe little bit of it you saw?"

"Because, " said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great andbrave a man you are. "

Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depthsof feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotionand bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. Hislifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kepthim waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it wasmerely the instinct of self-defence. 

"For months, " the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hillshave been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession ofthe lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have triedto cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debaucha legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in mypocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow ofdeath and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countrysidethat you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in theirhomes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act towithin two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and lookyou in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave thesuggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take youinto a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know thefutility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you thisminute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave manlives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If thewhole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?

"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the lawinto their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. Theyhave done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? Youhave power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of theland. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have beenmisled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shallprevail: Justice shall conquer. ' And where does right prevail? Andwhen shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrasesyourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them. But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You cansay. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?Then see that they come to no harm. 

"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man thatonce lived within you. I saw you--!"

"Don't harp on that, " Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothingabout it. "

"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you thinkthat if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come nearyou at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thingthat you have done. I would have given these confessions which I holdto the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and penwould go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side. I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe thediscipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. Iwould have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But Iwould not have come to you. 

"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for Iwould have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A_coward_, do you remember that word?"

The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away aghastly thing that would leap upon him. 

"A coward without a heart, " the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "whohas men and women and children in his power and who, because he has noheart, can use his power to crush them. 

"If I had not seen, I would have said that. 

"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the samebrave man with a heart that I saw on that day?

"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defencesand puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness ofproperty? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will godown into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the nakedtruth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?

"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you whichgave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you arenot capable of being that same man with the heart of a great andtender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. Iwill have my answer. "

Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling asthough in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his commandof mind and tongue. 

"Words, words, words, " he groaned at last. "Your life is made ofwords. Words are your coin. What do you know?

"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man thatwas once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When didwords ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here withyour question. It's made of words. 

"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth isa word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do youthink men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ youknow?

"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for thewords? No!

"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do_you_ know?

"Go out there. Stay there. " He pointed. "I've got to think. "

He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishoprose and walked from the room. 

When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the doorbarred it. 

He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his proppedhands. 

He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting blackand steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bangthat went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was asinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that goodman's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediatelythat he had been mistaken. 

Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartmentwithin it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. Heset it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it, questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expressionof a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled. 

The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet, translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the strikingfeatures that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyesthere seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, alight, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowlyradiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable, gentle loveliness. 

Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within. He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemedso wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answerthat shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. Thelight within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham andillusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived withtruth. 

The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to asob. 

"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a littletruth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!

"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told thesame lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heavenhappy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yetyou died a happy woman, because of that lie. 

"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yetthey made you happy. Where is truth?

"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like whatthey call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"

He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did heexpect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under thebitter revelation?

"I've been everything, " he went on, still trying to make his point, "I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?

"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?

"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes. Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any differencewith you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery, words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"

But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truthpersisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. Andthe dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked outwondering at a world remade. 

"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Isthat what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words andbeneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And doyou, somewhere, understand now?

"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when youunderstood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would callfine? Or was it the words?

"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that wasreally the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is theretruth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, didyou somehow understand all the time?"

He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then hesaid:

"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him. But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what theycall a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing, a brave thing. I did it for you. 

"And--I'll do this for you. "

He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Thenhe locked it away quickly in its place. 

He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and beganwriting. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, theother to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad andwrote a note, this to his personal representative who was followingthe state troops into the hills. 

He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called aclerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand andasked the Bishop back into the office. 

Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:

"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will preferto go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command ofthe troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties. The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think. There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You cansettle the whole matter in no time. 

"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on whatores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't gofor much up there, I guess, " he put in grimly--"that it will be fair. You can make that the basis of settlement. 

"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the mostgood. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, Ifind. 

"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop, " heconcluded abruptly. 

The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with asudden, unwonted emotion. 

"I will not cheapen this, sir, " he said evenly, "by attempting tothank you. "

"A mere whim of mine, that's all, " Stanton cut in almost curtly, thesteel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A merewhim. "

"Well, " said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "Ionly came to ask a question, anyhow. " Then he turned and walkedbriskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what theother man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner. 

So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other. Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man doesever let another man see what is in his heart?

 * * * * *

All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider andwider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of menhidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly andmore clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. Hisline was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemyhad known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a fewdaring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strengthof the men with him. 

All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups andtroops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever fartherupon the enveloping wings to east and west. 

Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in andalmost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave theirhorses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But thespreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot bythe few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animalsto make a show of greater force than they really had. The horsesfurnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All theafternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified, wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the patteringcrackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before hadlearned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling. Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick withhorror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready tofire on any moving twig or scraping branch. 

In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside toevery man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. Theycould make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers andsheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknownand where nobody would bother with them. 

The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few. They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectlygood reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason, indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in bythe soldier pickets and sent down to jail. 

Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion init of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily outto their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which theyhad taken from the construction depots along the line which they haddestroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each manthat this would probably be his last meal. 

The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them. They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and theformation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept thosedirectly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothingin sight before them but that they would certainly all be surroundedand shot down or taken. 

Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching themost distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men haltand slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they goingto rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!

But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walkedback in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must bea ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, butdetermined not to be drawn out. 

Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old manwalking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twistedrails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightlystooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was theBishop of Alden!

Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either sideto stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meetthe Bishop. 

"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time tospeak as they met. 

"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how badit is, " said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. Idon't think any of them are bad. "

"Call in your men, " said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are goingback. "

At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and theBishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gatheredround, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the WhiteHorse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Menwho had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the sceneof that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And youngmen who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of hiscoming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him. What did this coming mean?

He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy, was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:

"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back toyour families at once. "

Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the firsttime knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them. They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many whohad thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and cryingover the names of those they were saved to. 

The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back downthe roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gonecompletely out of his mind in these last hours. 

"Bishop, " he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said youlied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course. "

"My boy, " said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on hissoul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer. 

"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor ofall the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer. Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are thingsbigger than we are. We get no answer. "

Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day. 

X

THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID

It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud ofPromise. 

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

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

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

The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to thebig, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brooknever came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not havebelieved it if it had been told. 

And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--whichshe had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe wassad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe wasnot unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good. Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in theworld to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was inHeaven. 

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

"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after someverbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"

"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthesharply. 

Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:

"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Whydidn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babiesthrough the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid ofthem? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers upthere to get into their houses and make the houses warm before thecoming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn'tyou come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring forold Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till sheshamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebodythen? Why didn't you come see?"

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

"But she should have been delighted to see you, " Cynthe snapped back. "Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. Sheshould have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said toher the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. Youcalled her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of onecertainty, she should have flown to you. No?"

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

"But she--she cared for me, " he blurted out. "I know she did. Icouldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--youdid so much for me. "

"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainousmonster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _monRafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called himmurderer, blackened his name, for _you_!

"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_

"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death. _Never!_

"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to paythat debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in. I did it for _you_! Ha!"

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

"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"

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

"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where youstood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give upthe secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted mewith!

"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God mustcome down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for_you_!

"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!

"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were aninnocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must comeforth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare youinnocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! Theearth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and hewas guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_

"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waitedfor the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was inyour soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _monRafe_ was guilty. By how much?

"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you. Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was thedifference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!

"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you wereguilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!

"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more fromthat man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. Youwere ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he wasdesperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty. 

"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened hispoor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the goodM'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make youinnocent!

"Bah! _Innocent!_"

She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quiteall that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it wasabout even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She hadfelt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was muchrelieved. 

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

He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did notargue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Ofall the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that notbecause she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just onething. 

Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau. 

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

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

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

And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could lookdown upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, theconviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "Thereis the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anythingabout that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here. "

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

She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned thingsoutside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men. He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home thanit had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from therailroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the highhills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a tasteof money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of hispeople and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself acareer. 

He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirtythousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would beunlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was agame and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money bymaking things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hillcountry with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed tohim. 

All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men haddone in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding thisknowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already heknew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more aboutgrowing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how muchthis meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youthmore than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Nextweek he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislativecommittee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to getappropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls fromout of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forestfires almost harmless. 

He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that lawschool diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal ofthe world--look cheap and little. 

But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The highcolour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before himand across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see theword--_guilty_. 

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

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

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

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

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

What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that dayon the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there issomething bigger than we are. " Was this what it meant? Was this thething bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, hadlooked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing thatwas bigger than he?

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

He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That waswhy she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But whatwas the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merelydeny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. Whatcould he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speakof that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything. This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would standbetween them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that wassealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was strongerthan he. There was no answer. There was no way out. 

Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!

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

It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipeaway Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guiltfrom Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_believed it!

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

Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss ofdespairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was noguidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what itmight appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause toeffect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, orthought, that must have been the starting point, that must have heldthe germ of his guilt. 

Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not inany particular a different person, capable of anything different, likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from whathe had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There wasnever a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have beenready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given thecircumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. Whathad been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morningwas just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute. There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he couldpoint and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I amsorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say anyof these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty ofthat thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty ofit. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to makehim wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he wouldundo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begunaway back in the formation of his character, and which would persistas long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it. There was no way that it might ever end. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, andslipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride toLowville. 

"I came because I had to come, " Jeffrey began, when the Bishop hadseated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannotdo anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tellsome one. I _had_ to say it to somebody. "

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

"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole worldwanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on tothe wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting backagainst everybody. 

"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"

"I am not sure I understand, " said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffreystopped. 

"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guiltyof that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guiltyof it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I willalways be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turnover into the next world, free. I cannot, " he ended, with a sort ofgrim finality as though he saw again before him that wall againstwhich he had come the night before. 

"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "Whatbrought your mind to this view of the matter?"

"A girl, " said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl thatloved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me. "

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

"Before you could be guilty, " said the Bishop decisively, "you musthave injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did youinjure?"

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

Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, hiswish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He wasnone the worse of it. 

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

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

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

Whom?

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

"_God!_"

"Your business is with Him, then, " said the Bishop, rising with whatalmost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him. "

"But--but, " Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, toconfess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"

"No, " said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God. "

He took the young man's hand, saying:

"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. Youwould not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tellHim, what you have told me. "

In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hillsand home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a littleresentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone lookingfor sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God. 

Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the worldcontinually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did thepreachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, whatdid they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said Godhad answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; didthey find God?

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

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

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

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

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

It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It wasthe simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who madeit. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not liftitself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependenceutter and unreasoning. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where is she?" he asked without preface. 

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

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

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

"The last house, " she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. Shewill be glad, " she remarked simply, and turned on her way. 

Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the wordthat she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, offorgiveness--and of all things. 

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

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

"I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Lastnight He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will youtell me what to say to you, Ruth?"

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

There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softlythrough the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious beforeher, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Villageobserving them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question. 

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

"Poor boy, you have suffered too much!"

"What I suffered was that I made for myself, " he said thickly. "CyntheCardinal told me what a fool I was. "

"What did Cynthe tell you?"

"She told me that you loved me. "

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

"Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since youwere a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thoughtthat was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew thatthere was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, evenlife, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew itthat morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin. "

"Yes, I knew all that, " he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, andI knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day inthe courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!"

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

"Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like ablow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struckyou. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. Iknew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on tillyesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that youwere just facing something that was bigger than both of us--somethingthat was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out foryou but to do what you did. "

"Jeffrey, dear, " the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing wecan't speak about--"

"Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything. I _understand_. "

"And I understand a lot more, " he began again. "It took that littleFrench girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was adeeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do asyou did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't_happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to. "

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

"No, I wasn't innocent, " he said, as though to himself now. "I fooledmyself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man. I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quicknessprevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was amurderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty asCa--!"

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

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

"But it's--it's true, " said the boy brokenly as he held her. 

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

"And if you do say it, " she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too. "

"You?"

"Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I wasoutside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was Ithinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out therestalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done itgladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!

"Now, " she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'llsay it together!"

The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understoodnothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself inwhatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that hadfallen on him and wrap it around herself too. 

"My poor little white-souled darling, " he said through tears thatchoked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!"

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

"I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don'tsee how you can take me any way but just as I am. "

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

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

"After all I've made you suffer--!"

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

At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstandagain, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him. Now I want to find Him--your way. "

"You mean--you mean that you _believe_!"

"Yes, " said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainlydidn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, orto make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop oncetold me about--the thing that's bigger than I am. "

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

But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said. Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood muchof it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not comehome, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they wouldhave all their lives to finish the instructions. 

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

Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see. 

And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree. 

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

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

Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung upover the new line of railroad that came into the hills from WeldenJunction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at hisbeloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to havefaced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was manyyears older and less sturdy. 

The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent andthoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now, when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they didnot like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing ofhis. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he haddone right. Who was to tell?

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END

Printed in the United States of America.