e me?"

All that she needed from the dead and all they could have given her came
generously from Barbara. She sprang to her feet and threw her arms
around Miriam's neck. "Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "indeed I do, not
only for myself, but for father and mother, too. We don't forgive
enough, we don't love enough, we're not kind enough, and that's all
that's wrong with the world. There isn't time enough for bitterness--the
end comes too soon."

[Sidenote: At Peace]

Miriam went upstairs, strangely uplifted, strangely at peace. She was no
longer alien and apart, but one with the world. She had a sense of
universal kinship--almost of brotherhood. That night she slept, for the
first time in more than twenty years, without the fear of Constance.

And Constance, who was more sinned against than sinning, and whose
faithful old husband had that day lain down, in joy and triumph, to rest
beside her in the churchyard, came no more.

XXI

The Perils of the City

"Roger," remarked Miss Mattie, laying aside her paper, "I don't know as
I'm in favour of havin' you go to the city. Can't you get the Judge
another dog?"

"Why not, Mother?" asked Roger, ignoring her question.

"Because it seems to me, from all I've been readin' and hearin' lately,
that the city ain't a proper place for a young person. Take that
minister, now, that those folks brought down for Ambrose North's
funeral. I never heard anything like it in all my life. You was there
and you heard what he said, so there ain't no need of dwellin' on it,
but it wasn't what I'm accustomed to in the way of funerals." Miss
Mattie's militant hairpins bristled as she spoke.

"I thought it was all right, Mother. What was wrong with it?"

[Sidenote: Everything Wrong]

"Wrong!" repeated Miss Mattie, in astonishment. "Everything was wrong
with it! Ambrose North wasn't a church-member and he never went more'n
once or twice that I know of, even after the Lord chastened him with
blindness for not goin'. There was no power to the sermon and no cryin'
except Barbara and that Miss Wynne that sang that outlandish piece
instead of a hymn.

"Why, Roger, I was to a funeral once over to the Ridge where the corpse
was an unbaptized infant, and you ought to have heard that preacher
describin' the abode of the lost! The child's mother fainted dead away
and had to be carried out of the church, it was that powerful and
movin'. That was somethin' like!"

It was in Roger's mind to