ng when he--

Then he dropped upon his knees beside the window and looked up into the
starry sky.

Garth's mother had lived long enough to teach him the holy secret of
her sweet patience and endurance. In moments of deep feeling, words
from his mother's Bible came to his lips more readily than expressions
of his own thought. Now, looking upward, he repeated softly and
reverently: "'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning.' And oh, Father," he added, "keep us in the
light--she and I. May there be in us, as there is in Thee, no
variableness, neither shadow which is cast by turning."

Then he rose to his feet and looked across once more to the stone lion
and the broad coping. His soul sang within him, and he folded his arms
across his chest. "My wife!" he said. "Oh! my wife!"

* * * * *

And, as the village clock struck one, Jane arrived at her decision.

Slowly she rose, and turned off all the lights; then, groping her way
to the bed, fell upon her knees beside it, and broke into a passion of
desperate, silent weeping.

CHAPTER XI

GARTH FINDS THE CROSS

The village church on the green was bathed in sunshine as Jane emerged
from the cool shade of the park. The clock proclaimed the hour
half-past eleven, and Jane did not hasten, knowing she was not expected
until twelve. The windows of the church were open, and the massive
oaken doors stood ajar.

Jane paused beneath the ivy-covered porch and stood listening. The
tones of the organ reached her as from an immense distance, and yet
with an all-pervading nearness. The sound was disassociated from hands
and feet. The organ seemed breathing, and its breath was music.

Jane pushed the heavy door further open, and even at that moment it
occurred to her that the freckled boy with a red head, and Garth's slim
proportions, had evidently passed easily through an aperture which
refused ingress to her more massive figure. She pushed the door further
open, and went in.

Instantly a stillness entered into her soul. The sense of unseen
presences, often so strongly felt on entering an empty church alone,
the impress left upon old walls and rafters by the worshipping minds of
centuries, hushed the insistent beating of her own perplexity, and for
a few moments she forgot the errand which brought her there, and bowed
her head in uni