* * * *

Out under the coruscating skies again, into the crisp air! Bradley
turned and looked back upon the little schoolhouse, packed to
suffocation; it would always remain a memorable place in this wide
land.

"Oh, you've done them good--more than you can tell!" Ida said.

"I begin to believe it is the beginning of the greatest reform movement
in history," he said at last. "They are searching for the truth; and
whenever any great body of men search for the truth, they find it, and
the finding of it is tremendous. Its effect reaches every quarter of
the earth."

They mounted to their perilous seat once more, and moved out into the
night. The wind seemed to have gone down. There was a deep hush in the
air, as if the high stars listened in their illimitable spaces. The
plain seemed as lonely and as unlighted as the Arctic Ocean. Even the
barking of a farm-yard dog had a wolfish and savage suggestiveness.

They rode in silence. Ida sighed deeply. At last she said: "It's only
an incident with us. We go back to our pleasant and varied lives; they
go back to their lonely homes, and to their bleak corn-fields."

"But you have given them something to hope for, something to think of,"
Bradley said, seeking to comfort her.

"Yes, that is the only consolation I can get out of it. This movement
has come into their lives like a new religion. It _is_ a new
religion--the religion of humanity. It does help them to forget mud and
rain and cold and monotony."

Again Bradley's arm seemed necessary to her safety, but this time it
closed around her, strong and resolute, yet he dared not say a word. He
was not sure of her. It seemed impossible that this wonderful,
beautiful, and intellectual woman should care for him; and yet, when he
was speaking, her eyes had pleaded for him.

The driver talked on about the meeting, but his passengers were silent.
Under cover of listening they were both dreaming. Bradley was
forecasting his life, and wondering how much she would make up of it;
wondering if she would make more of it than she had of his past life.
How far off she had always seemed to him, and yet she had always been a
part of his inner life. Now she sat beside him, in the circle of his
arm, and yet she seemed hopelessly out of his reach. She liked him as a
friend and brother reformer--that was all. Besides, he had no right to
hope now, when his fortunes had become failures.

She was thinking of him. She was