reverence for Toyner, a sense of
the contrast between him and her father and the other men whom she knew,
which had been growing upon her, now culminated in an impulse of
devotion. A new faculty opened within her nature, a new mine of wealth.

The thin white-faced man that lay half dead in the bottom of the canoe
perhaps experienced some reviving influence from this new energy of love
that had transformed the woman who stood near him, for he opened his
eyes again and saw her, this time quite distinctly, standing looking
down upon him. There was tenderness in her eyes, and her sunbrowned face
was all aglow with a flush that was brighter than the flush of physical
exercise. About her bending figure grew what seemed to Bart's
half-dazzled sense the flowers of paradise, for wild sunflowers and
sheafs of purple eupatorium brushed her arms, standing in high phalanx
by the edge of the creek. Bart smiled as he looked, but he had no
thoughts, and all that he felt was summed up in a word that he uttered
gently:

"Ann!"

She knelt down at once. "What is it, Bart?" and again: "What were you
trying to say?"

It is probable that her words did not reach him at all. He was only
half-way back from the region of his vision; but he opened his eyes and
looked at her again.

The sun rose, and a level golden beam struck through between the trunks
of the trees, touching the flowers and branches here and there with
moving lights, and giving all the air a brighter, mellower tint. There
was something that Bart did feel a desire to say--a great thought that
at another time he might have tried in a multitude of words to have
expressed and failed. He saw Ann, whom he loved, and the paradise about
her; he wanted to bring the new knowledge that had come to him in the
light of his vision to bear upon her who belonged now to the region of
outward not of inward sight and yet was part of what must always be to
him everlasting reality.

"What were you going to say, Bart?" she asked again tenderly.

And again he summed up all that he thought and felt in one word:

"God."

"Yes, Bart," she said, with some sudden intuitive sense of agreement.

Then, seeming to be satisfied, he closed his eyes and went back into the
state of drowsiness.

CHAPTER XIV.

Ann went up to the house. It was a great relief to her to remember that
the man for whom she was going to ask help was no criminal. She could
hold up her head and speak boldly.

Anothe