tairs was the old man--stern of face, save
that far back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually.

Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to Bernal. He went slowly
toward her, still suffering from the old man's coldness--and for the hurts
he had unwittingly put upon him.

The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless,
neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a
tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him
her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart. After
all, men were born to hurt and be hurt.

He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, looking into Nancy's
black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, noting that from nineteen to twenty
her neck had broadened at the base the least one might discern, that her
face was less full yet richer in suggestion--her face of the odds and ends
when she did not smile. At this moment she was not only unsmiling, but
excited.

"Oh, Bernal, what is it? Tell me quick. Allan was so vague--though he said
he'd always stand by you, no matter what you did. What _have_ you done,
Bernal? Is it a college scrape?"

"Oh, that's only Allan's big-hearted way of talking! He's so generous and
loyal I think he's often been disappointed that I didn't do something, so
he _could_ stand by me. No--no scrapes, Nance, honour bright!"

"But you're leaving--"

"Well, in a way I have done something. I've found I couldn't be a minister
as Grandad had set his heart on my being--"

"But if you haven't done anything wicked, why not?"

"Oh, I'm not a believer."

"In what?"

"In anything, I think--except, well, in you and Grandad and--and Allan and
Clytie--yes, and in myself, Nance. That's a big point. I believe in
myself."

"And you're going because you don't believe in other things?"

"Yes, or because I believe too much--just as you like to put it. I
demanded a better God of Grandad, Nance--one that didn't create hell and
men like me to fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals
into heaven."

"You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever. She says no one with an open
mind can live twenty years in Boston without being vastly
broadened--'broadening into the higher unbelief,' she calls it. She
says she has passed through nearly every stage of unbelief there is,
but that she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last to rest
in the shadow of the Cross."

As Aunt