make you have a better understanding of
children," replied Mrs. Wilkins. "Christ said that unless you became
like one of them you could not enter the kingdom."

There was another silence with Jason's sobs growing fainter, then, "But
he was wicked, Mary, and he deserved punishment."

"But not such a punishment. Of course, I had to support you, no matter
what I thought. But O Ethan, Ethan, it's so easy to kill the fineness in
a proud and sensitive heart like Jason's."

"Nevertheless," returned the minister, "when he spurns the giving hand
of God, forgiveness is God's, not mine. We'll discuss it no more."

Nor was the matter discussed again. Jason appeared at breakfast, with
dark rings about his eyes, after having done his chores, as usual. Once,
it seemed to his mother that he looked at her with a gaze half
wondering, half hurt, as if she had failed him when his trust and need
had been greatest. But he said nothing and she hoped that her mind had
suggested what was in her aching heart and that Jason's was only a
child's hurt that would soon heal.

He never again asked for the magazines. On Christmas morning his father
placed them, tattered and marred, from their many lendings, beside his
plate. Jason did not take them when he left the table and later on his
mother carried them up to his room. Whether he read them or not, she did
not know. But she was glad to see him begin again to watch for the
packet and read the current numbers as they arrived.

She dyed Billy Ames' striped pants in walnut juice and they really
looked very well. Jason wore them without comment as he did the shirts
she fashioned for him from many shirt tails.

And in the spring they left High Hill for a valley town.

[Illustration]

II

THE CIRCUIT RIDER

[Illustration]

II

THE CIRCUIT RIDER

The years sped on with unbelievable swiftness as they are very prone to
do after the corner into the teens is turned.

Jason worked every summer, but he did not offer to buy his mother a
dress nor did he buy himself either clothing or books. He put all he
earned by toward his course in medicine. When he was a little fellow,
his mother had given him a lacquered sewing box that had belonged to her
French mother. It had proved an admirable treasure box for childish
hoardings. Jason, the summer he was thirteen, cleared it out and put
into it his summer earnings, ten dollars.

With his newly acquired reticence, he did not speak of the