, Mr. Hartsook." Hannah's voice was broken.
These solemn words of love were like a river in the desert, and she was
like a wanderer dying of thirst. "I don't know, Mr. Hartsook. If I was
alone, it wouldn't matter. But I've got my blind mother and my poor
Shocky to look after. And I don't want to make mistakes. And the world
is so full of lies I don't know what to believe. Somehow I can't help
believing what you say. You seem to speak so true. But--"

"But what?" said Ralph.

"But you know how I saw you just as kind to Martha Hawkins on Sunday
as--as--"

"Han--ner!" It was the melodious voice of the angry Mrs. Means, and
Hannah lifted her pail and disappeared.

Standing in the shadow of his own despair, Ralph felt how dark a night
could be when it had no promise of morning.

And Dr. Small, who had been stabling his horse just inside the barn,
came out and moved quietly into the house just as though he had not
listened intently to every word of the conversation.

As Ralph walked away he tried to comfort himself by calling to his aid
the bulldog in his character. But somehow it did not do him any good.
For what is a bulldog but a stoic philosopher? Stoicism has its value,
but Ralph had come to a place where stoicism was of no account. The
memory of the Helper, of his sorrow, his brave and victorious endurance,
came when stoicism failed. Happiness might go out of life, but in the
light of Christ's life happiness seemed but a small element anyhow. The
love of woman might be denied him, but there still remained what was
infinitely more precious and holy, the love of God. There still remained
the possibility of heroic living. Working, suffering, and enduring still
remained. And he who can work for God and endure for God, surely has
yet the best of life left. And, like the knights who could find the Holy
Grail only in losing themselves, Hartsook, in throwing his happiness out
of the count, found the purest happiness, a sense of the victory of the
soul over the tribulations of life. The man who knows this victory
scarcely needs the encouragement of the hope of future happiness. There
is a real heaven in bravely lifting the load of one's own sorrow and
work.

And it was a good thing for Ralph that the danger hanging over Shocky
made immediate action necessary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: The total absence of the word _pail_ not only from the
dialect, but even from cultivated speech in the Southern and Border
States unt