u know that old Irish
troth," he said, "which would have been enough, even in that hard,
unromantic world of ours, to have made you legally my wife, if said
over any Scottish stream? I thought you knew; you are sure I would not
trick you? You know I could not?" He put her head back on his shoulder
and looked into her shining eyes. It seemed to him he could not bear
even a look of reproach. She raised her hands almost as if she were
placing an invisible crown upon his head, and let her arms fall about
his shoulders.

"Then I am your wife while living water runs?"

"Forever and forever," he replied.

"Oh, wait, wait just a little," she answered.

XVI

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be
strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in
trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in
that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of
society.

BURKE.

Adam found a note beside his plate in the morning. "I will be back
before five o'clock," it said; "I must think." He did not sit down to
the table she had spread for him, but called the dogs; Prince was
missing, and this was a relief to him. Nothing could happen to her
when Prince was with her. His first impulse was to follow her, but he
repelled it, and he too sat down to think. Lassie whined uneasily, and
he stroked her head absent-mindedly, and finally went out and tried to
work. The hours dragged away, and by four o'clock he could stand it no
longer. He went to the gateway. As he unfastened it, he saw her coming
toward him, but she stopped and he joined her, and together they
turned back to the boulder. He noticed that she was very white, and
that her eyes looked as if she had not slept, but he only said, "Have
you thought?"

"Yes," she answered, "I have thought."

"And decided?"

"No," she said wearily; "we must decide together. We are not children,
Adam, nor are we in any way the prototypes of those first parents of
ours. I think sometimes that ever since their day their children have
been walking in a blind circle, eating not the fruit of knowledge, but
of the knowledge of good and evil. And what do we know, you and I,
after all these years? Are you sure what we ought to do? It is as if
God had taken us into a conspiracy to renew the old, or create a new,
scheme of existence. Possibly we are being tried, tested, to prove
whether or not we have learned our lesson. We must be b