t first, then with a genuine
surrender to the comic side of his visible fright. The mirth came back
into the brown depths of her eyes again, and her face cleared itself of
tear-stains and the marks of agitation. "I AM a nice quiet party for
a Methodist minister to go walking in the woods with, am I not?" she
cried, shaking her skirts and smiling at him.

"I am not a Methodist minister--please!" answered Theron--"at least not
today--and here--with you! I am just a man--nothing more--a man who has
escaped from lifelong imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it
is to be free!"

"Ah, my friend," Celia said, shaking her head slowly, "I'm afraid you
deceive yourself. You are not by any means free. You are only looking
out of the window of your prison, as you call it. The doors are locked,
just the same."

"I will smash them!" he declared, with confidence. "Or for that matter,
I HAVE smashed them--battered them to pieces. You don't realize what
progress I have made, what changes there have been in me since that
night, you remember that wonderful night! I am quite another being, I
assure you! And really it dates from way beyond that--why, from the very
first evening, when I came to you in the church. The window in Father
Forbes' room was open, and I stood by it listening to the music next
door, and I could just faintly see on the dark window across the
alley-way a stained-glass picture of a woman. I suppose it was the
Virgin Mary. She had hair like yours, and your face, too; and that is
why I went into the church and found you. Yes, that is why."

Celia regarded him with gravity. "You will get yourself into great
trouble, my friend," she said.

"That's where you're wrong," put in Theron. "Not that I'd mind any
trouble in this wide world, so long as you called me 'my friend,' but
I'm not going to get into any at all. I know a trick worth two of that.
I've learned to be a showman. I can preach now far better than I used
to, and I can get through my work in half the time, and keep on the
right side of my people, and get along with perfect smoothness. I
was too green before. I took the thing seriously, and I let every
mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fanatic worry me, and keep me on pins
and needles. I don't do that any more. I've taken a new measure of life.
I see now what life is really worth, and I'm going to have my share of
it. Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible happiness for the
rest of my days,