l beauty, all wisdom, in the natal gifts of her, telling him, with
every breath, she loved him and only him. And yet, his knowledge of life
was quick to answer, it was the accretion of long hungers, the sum of
all desires since she was little and consigned to Aunt Anne's delicate
frigidities for nurture and, as the event proved, for penury. She had no
conception of a love as irresistible as hers was now abounding. In a
year or two, youth would meet her on the road of youth, and they would
kiss and old Rookie would become the dim duty of remembered custom. And
as he thought these things, his overwhelming revolt against earth and
its cruelty came over him, and he stood there gripping his hands into
their palms, again at open war with life. It was a question without an
answer, a hunger unfed, a promise broken. Eternal life was the soporific
distilled by man, in his pathetic cunning, to dull the anguish of
anticipated death. Standing there in the silence, he felt the waves of
loneliness going over him, and thought of Nan in her chamber across the
hall, angelic in her compassion, her arms ready for him as a mother is
ready for her child. The moonlight made arabesques on the walls, and he
walked to the window with an instinctive craving for the open. He stood
gripping the casing with both hands and looking up over the hillside
where also the light lay revealingly. Up there was the hut where Tira
might be now if Tenney had not wounded himself, fleeing in her turn from
earthly cruelty. Up there Old Crow had lived in his own revolt against
earth cruelty. And, with the thought, Old Crow seemed to be, not on the
hillside, but beside him, reading to him the testimony of the mottled
book, but more insistently, in a clearer voice. If it could be so, if
God had intention, not only toward his own colossal inventiveness, but
as touching the well-being of man--yes, and of the other creatures, too,
the pathetically oppressing and oppressed--if He had given man the
problem with no solution indicated, to work it out as he had worked out
pottery and fabrics, and light and talking over space--always in
conformity to law--it was stupendous. No matter how many million men
went to the building of the safeguarding reefs, no matter through what
blood and tears the garden of the earth was watered if the flower of
faith could grow at last.

"That is my legacy to the boy," he seemed to hear Old Crow repeating.
"He must not be afraid."

And as he was