you have repent, and have the Christ in your heart, so are you
high--lifted above the sin, and if they take you--if they put the iron
on your hands--Ah, I know, it is there you go to give yourself
up,--if they keep you forever in the prison, still forever are you
free. If they put you to the death to be satisfied of the law, then
quickly are you alive in Paradise with Christ. Listen, it is for
the love that you give yourself up--for the sorrowfulness in your
heart that you have killed your friend? Is not? Yes. So is good.
See. Look to the hills, the high mountains, all far around us?
They are beautiful. They are yours. God gives you. And the sky--so
clear--and the bright sun and the spring life and the singing of the
birds? All are yours--God gives. And the love in your heart--for me?
God gives, yes, and for the one you have hurt? Yes. God gives it.
And for the Christ who so loves you? Yes. So is the love the great
life of God in you. It is yours. Listen. Go with the love in your
heart--for me,--it will not hurt. It will be sweet to me. I carry
no curse for you, as you say. It is gone. If I see you again in
this world--as may be--is joy--great joy. If I see you no more
here, yet in Paradise I will see you, and there also it will be joy,
for it is the love that is all of life, and all of eternity, and
lives--lives!"

Again he held her to his heart in a long embrace, and, when at last he
walked down the trail into the desert, he still felt her tears on his
cheek, her kisses on his lips, and her heart against his own.

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LITTLE SCHOOL-TEACHER

On a warm day in May, a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and
sets the bees humming, and the children longing for a chance to pull
off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook; on such a day the
door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a
long patch across the floor toward the "teacher's desk," and the
breeze came in and tossed a stray curl about her forehead, and the
children turned their heads often to look at the round clock on the
wall, watching for the slowly moving hands to point to the hour of
four.

It was a mixed school. Children of all ages were there, from naughty
little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of
seventeen and nineteen, who were in algebra and the sixth reader. It
was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne
lingered in the school this y