ers had any delusion that his prayer was finished.
He simply had been forgetting them and now remembered. Then he lifted
his head and straightened his shoulders, and what he saw through the
shining oak ceiling of the new brick church no one shall ever know.

"Ef any one here present is waitin' to hear me say I'm sorry fer any
lovin' I've ever done of man--or woman (course I know you ain't
expectin' it, Lord)--then I am obleeged to state he or she'll be
disappointed. Women is the nearest things I've known on this earth to
the angels, and I ain't been disobedient to the heavenly vision."

Up to this moment Uncle Ambrose's voice had been low and evenly
modulated, but now it changed like the deeper tones of an organ until it
came to be the most wonderful music in the world--a voice that was able
perfectly to express the richest things of the spirit. "But, Lord, ef
ever I'd wronged a woman, I'd not be askin' forgiveness of you; I'd just
ask that it be meted out to me in like proportion as it has been meted
out to the woman, forever and ever. Amen."

And then not waiting for the closing of the service, and forgetting his
hat, Uncle Ambrose passed on down the church aisle, where room was
instantly made for him, out into the white stillness of the autumn
night, away from calumny and human irritation, and the little
congregation seeing him go with a look of added dignity and peace,
whatever their former ill-founded suspicions, after to-night believed
nothing against him.

CHAPTER XVIII

INDIAN SUMMER

TRUTH is immortal, and one truth is that there cannot be two pursuers in
the game of love.

After the night of the first revival service Uncle Ambrose, making no
further visits to the Red Farm, it was the woman who set herself to lure
him back again.

In the first place, he had by then convinced her that her mistrust had
been unjust and that she had listened to suggestion that was not
evidence. So there was but one way by which the widow felt she could
make reparation and restore peace between herself and Ambrose Thompson.
She must find out the name of Sam's father, for necessarily the boy had
to have two parents, and the mother she had known as she had come
frequently to the farm on visits to her son up to the time of her death.

The original informant mentioned in the Bible was a female: "And the
damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things."

Therefore after a certain period of effort the boy