s, after all, better to be an authoress. "There was Louisa Alcott,
you know, Randy."

He was scornful. "Women weren't made for that--to sit in an attic and
write. Why do you keep talking about doing things, Becky? You'll get
married when you grow up and that will be the end of it."

"I am not going to get married, Randy."

"Well, of course you will, and I shall marry and be a lawyer like my
father, and perhaps I'll go to Congress."

Later he had a leaning towards the ministry. "If I preached I could make
the world better, Becky."

That was the time when she had come down for Hallowe'en, and it was on
Sunday evening that they had talked it over in the Bird Room at
Huntersfield. There had been a smouldering fire on the wide hearth, and
the Trumpeter Swan had stared down at them with shining eyes. They had
been to church that morning and the text had been, "The harvest is past,
the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

"I want to make the world better, Becky," Randy had said in the still
twilight, and Becky had answered in an awed tone, "It would be so
splendid to see you in the pulpit, Randy, wearing a gown like Dr.
Hodge."

But the pulpit to Randy had meant more than that. And the next day when
they walked through the deserted mill town, he had said, "Everybody is
dead who lived here, and once they were alive like us."

She had shivered, "I don't like to think of it."

"It's a thing we've all got to think of. I like to remember that Thomas
Jefferson came riding through and stopped at the mill and talked to the
miller."

"How dreadful to know that they are--dead."

"Mother says that men like Jefferson never die. Their souls go marching
on."

The stream which ground the county's corn was at their feet. "But what
about the miller?" Becky had asked; "does his soul march, too?"

Randy, with the burden of yesterday's sermon upon him, hoped that the
miller was saved.

He smiled now as he thought of the rigidness of his boyish theology. To
him in those days Heaven was Heaven and Hell was Hell.

The years at school had brought doubt--apostasy. Then on the fields of
France, Randy's God had come back to him--the Christ who bound up
wounds, who gave a cup of cold water, who fought with flaming sword
against the battalions of brutality, who led up and up that white
company who gave their lives for a glorious Cause. Here, indeed, was a
God of righteousness and of justice, of tenderness and purity. To other
men t