would not show. And oh!' she said, 'and oh!' she said, and failed and
tried again, 'oh! his knife--_he has not his knife_.'

The love and faith of Lois sprang up against belief.

'Child, child! what do you dare to say--to think? Would you hint that
Christian--my boy Christian--has done murder?

'No, no, never! No, never, never! I would stake my life--my soul--that it
was fair fight!'

Lois looked at her and said a cruel thing: 'You are no helpmeet for him.
Thank God! you are not his wife!'

Rhoda quivered at that, and found it a saying hard to forgive. Her heart
swelled to refute it, and might not for maidenhood. Long ago she would
have had Christian rise up to avenge himself terribly; her pride had
suffered from the poor temper she saw in his. Now, though he had
exceeded the measure of her vague desire, he stood fair and high in her
estimation, illuminated, not blackened by the crime she imputed. Against
all the world, against his mother, she was at one with him. Was there any
other who desired and deserved the nearest and dearest claim, that she
had renounced.

A wedge of silence drove between them. The character of the mother's
stern virtue dawned upon Rhoda, appalling her: for the salvation of her
son's soul she might bid him accept the full penalty of his crime--even
that. A horror of such monstrous righteousness took the girl. She stole
to unbolt the door and away to warn Christian, when a whisper stayed her.

'I failed him. I thought then only of my man, and I had no prayers for my
boy. Ah, Christian, Christian!'

Doubt had entered. Lois knelt and prayed.

Rhoda wavered. Her estimate or the world's, the partial or the
vindictive, shrank to their due proportions, as Lois thus set Christian's
crime before the eye of Heaven. She wavered, turned, and fell kneeling,
clinging and weeping, convicted of the vain presumption that would keep
Christian from the hands of his God.

She was bidden away when Lois caught a sound of Christian.

His mother held him by the window for the first word.

'Christian, where is Philip?'

His startled eyes were a stab to her soul; the tide that crimsoned his
very brow checked hers at her heart. He failed of answering, and guilt
weighed down his head. She rallied on an inspiration that greatest crimes
blanch, never redden, and 'You have not killed him?' was a question of
little doubt.

'No, thank God! no!' he said, and she saw that he shook.

Then he tried to out with the