been
able to do me justice. Now, will you call my mother?"

"Mother," he said, taking her by the hand and placing it in
Gabriella's, "this is my wife, as I hope she will be, and your
daughter; and I have asked her to stay and help you to nurse me through
this cold."

Three twilights more and there was a scene in the little upper room of
the farmhouse: David drawn up on the bed; at one side of it, the poor
distracted mother, rocking herself and loudly weeping; for though
mothers may not greatly have loved their grown sons, when the big men
lie stricken and the mothers once more take their hands to wash them,
bathe their faces with a cloth, put a spoon to their lips, memory
brings back the days when those huge erring bodies lay across their
breasts. They weep for the infant, now an infant again and perhaps
falling into a long sleep.

On the other side of the bed sat David's father, bending over toward,
trying now, as he had so often tried, to reach his son; thinking at
swift turns of the different will he would have to make and of who
would write it; of his own harshness; and also not free from the awful
dread that this was the summons to his son to enter Eternity with his
soul unprepared. At the foot of the bed were the two doctors, watchful,
whispering to each other, one of whom led the mother out of the room;
over by the door the two negro women and the negro man. Gabriella was
not there.

Gabriella had gone once more to where she had been many times: gone to
pour out in secret the prayer of her church, and of her own soul for
the sick--with faith that her prayer would be answered.

A dark hour: a dog howling on the porch below; at the stable the cries
of hungry, neglected animals; the winter hush settling over the great
evening land.

XXII

When one sets out to walk daily across a wood or field in a fresh
direction, starting always at the same point and arriving always at the
same, without intention one makes a path; it may be long first, but in
time the path will come. It commences at the home gate or bars and
reaches forward by degrees; it commences at the opposite goal and
lengthens backward thence: some day the ends meet and we discover with
surprise how slightly we have deviated in all those crossings and
recrossings. The mind has unconsciously marked a path long before the
feet have traced it.

When Gabriella had begun teaching, she passed daily out of the yard
into an apple orchard and then