onely
feeling."

"No!" almost shrieked Nathaniel, as if the suggestion insulted him; "no!
The true God declared himself to me long since. But what do you make
of it, young Miss?"

Priscilla turned her eyes to the open, free outer world, where the
sunshine was and the stirring of spring.

"Sometimes," she whispered, "I love to think of God coming down from all
the shrines and altars of the world, and walking with his children--in
the Garden! They need him so. I do not like altars or shrines; the Garden
is the holiest place for God to be!"

"Thou blasphemer!" Glenn struggled to an upright position and his
sightless eyes were fixed upon his child. "Wouldst thou desecrate the
holy of holies, the altars of the living God?"

"If he is a living God he will not stay upon an altar; he will come and
walk with his children!"

The tone of the absorbed voice reached where heretofore it had never
touched.

"I'll have none of thee!" commanded Nathaniel, his face dangerously
purple. "Your words are of the--the devil! Leave me! leave me!" And for
the second time Priscilla was ordered from her father's house.

It did not matter. It was all so useless, and the future was so blank.
Still, to go back to Master Farwell's just then was impossible, and
Priscilla turned toward the wood road leading to the Far Hill Place. She
had no plan, no purpose. She was drifting, drifting, and could not see
her way. The bright sun touched her comfortingly. In the shadow it was
chilly; but the red rock was warm and luring. And so she came to the open
space and the almost forgotten shrine where once she had raised her
Strange God.

She sat down upon a fallen tree and looked over the little, many-islanded
bay to the Secret Portage. Through that she seemed to pass yearningly,
and her eyes grew large and strained. Then she stretched out her arms,
her young, empty arms.

"My Garden!" she called; "my Garden, my dear, dear love and Margaret's
God! Margaret's and mine!"

And so she sat for a while longer. Then, because the chill air crept
closer and closer, she arose and faced the old, bleached skull. The
winters had killed the sheltering vines that once hid it from all eyes
but hers. It stood bare and hideous, as if demanding that she again
worship it. A frenzy overpowered Priscilla. That whitened, dead thing
brought back memories that hurt and stung by their very sweetness. She
rushed to the spot and seized the forked stick upon which the skull
res