The confidence reposed by the genuine Quaker in such intimations of the Spirit is absolute. They are to him as imperative as the audible voice of God to Moses by the burning bush.

"Farewell, mother, I am off," he said, kissing her upon the white forehead.

"Thee is going to the lumber camp, my son?" she asked, regarding him with ill-concealed pride.

"I am, and hope to press the truth home to the hearts of those who shall hear me," replied the young devotee, his face lighting up with the blended rapture of religious enthusiasm, youth and health.

"The Lord be with thee and make thy ministrations fruitful," his mother said, and with this blessing he set off.

As the young mystic had yesterday thought the world dark and stormy because of the tempest in his soul, so now he thought it still and peaceful, because of his inward calm. The very intensity of his recent struggles had rendered his soul acutely sensitive, like a delicate musical instrument which responded freely to the innumerable fingers wherewith Nature struck its keys. Her manifold forms, her gorgeous colors, her gigantic forces thrilled and intoxicated him.

That sense of fellowship with all the forms of life about him, which is characteristic of all our moments of deepest rapture in the embrace of Nature, filled his soul with joy. He accosted the trees as one greets a friend; he chatted with the brooks; he held conversation with the little lambs skipping in the pastures, and with the horses that whinnied as he passed.

Such opulent moments come to all in youth; moments when the soul, unconscious of its chains because they have not been stretched to their limits, roams the universe with God-like liberty and joy.

Had he been asked to analyze these exquisite emotions, the young Quaker would have said that they were the joys of the indwelling of the Divine Spirit. He did not realize how much of his exhilaration came from the feelings awakened by the experiences of the day before. One might almost say that a spiritual fragrance from the woman who had crossed his path was diffusing itself through the chambers of his soul. It was like the odor of violets which lingers after the flowers themselves are gone.

Up to this time, he had never felt the mighty and mysterious emotion of love. More than once, when he had seen the calm face of Dorothy Fraser, soft and tender feelings had arisen in his heart; but they were only the first faint gleams of that conflagration which sooner or later breaks forth in the souls of men like him.

It was this confusion of the sources of his happiness which made him oblivious to the struggle that was still going on within his mind. The question had been raised there as to whether he had chosen wisely in turning his back upon the joys of an earthly life for the joys of heaven. It had not been settled, and was waiting an opportunity to thrust itself again before his consciousness. In the meantime he was happy. Never had he seemed to himself more perfectly possessed by the Divine Spirit than at the moment when he reached the summit of the last hill, and looked down into the valley where lay the lumber-camp. He paused to gaze upon a scene of surpassing loveliness, and was for a moment absorbed by its beauty; but a sudden discovery startled and disturbed him. There was no smoke curling from the chimneys. There were no forms of men moving about in their brilliant woolen shirts; he listened in vain for voices; he could not even hear the yelp of the ever-watchful dogs.

"Can it be possible that I have been deceived by my vision?" he asked himself.

It was the first real skepticism of his life, and crowding it back into his heart as best he could, he pressed on, excited and curious. As he approached the rude structure, the signs of its desertion became indubitable. He called, but heard only the echo of his own voice. He tried the door, and it opened. Through it he entered the low-ceiled room. On every hand were evidences of recent departure; living coals still glowed in the ashes and crumbs were scattered on the tables. There could be no longer any doubt that the lumbermen had vanished. The last and most incontrovertible proof was tacked upon the wall in the shape of a flat piece of board on which were written in a rude scrawl these words: "We have gone to the Big Miami."

The face so bright and clear a moment ago was clouded now. He read the sentence over and over again. He sat down upon a bench and meditated, then rose and went out, walking around the cabin and returning to read the message once more. If he had spoken the real sentiment of his heart he would have said: "I have been deceived." He did not speak, however, but struggled bravely to throw off the feelings of surprise and doubt; and so, reassuring his faith again and again by really noble efforts, took from his pocket the lunch his mother had prepared, and ate it hungrily although abstractedly. As he did so, he felt the animal joy in food and rest, and his courage and confidence revived.

"It is plain," he said to himself, "that God has sent me here to try my faith. All he requires is obedience! It is not necessary that I should understand; but it is necessary that I should obey!"

The idea of a probation so unique was not distasteful to his romantic nature, and he therefore at once addressed himself to the business upon which he had come. He had been sent to preach, and preach he would. Drawing from the inner pocket of his coat a well-worn Bible, he turned to the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, rose to his feet and began to read. It was strange to be reading to this emptiness and silence, but after a moment he adjusted himself to the situation. The earnest effort he was making to control his mind achieved at least a partial success. His face brightened, he conjured up before his imagination the forms and faces of the absent men. He saw them with the eye of his mind. His voice grew firm and clear, and its tones reassured him.

Having finished the lesson, he closed the volume and began to pray. Now that his eyes were shut, the strangeness of the situation vanished entirely. He was no longer alone, for God was with him. The petition was full of devotion, tenderness and faith, and as he poured it forth his countenance beamed like that of an angel. When it was finished he began the sermon. The first few words were scarcely audible. The thoughts were disconnected and fragmentary. He suffered an unfamiliar and painful embarrassment, but struggled on, and his thoughts cleared themselves like a brook by flowing. Each effort resulted in a greater facility of utterance, and soon the joy of triumph began to inspire him. The old confidence returned at last and his soul, filled with faith and hope and fervor, poured itself forth in a full torrent. He began to be awed by the conjecture that his errand had some extraordinary although hidden import. Who could tell what mission these words were to accomplish in the plans of God? He remembered that the waves made by the smallest pebble flung into the ocean widen and widen until they touch the farthest shore, and he flung the pebbles of his speech into the great ocean of thought, transported by the hope of sometime learning that their waves had beat upon the shores of a distant universe.

Suddenly, in the midst of this tumultuous rush of speech, he heard, or thought he heard, a sound. It seemed to him like a sob and there followed stumbling footsteps as of some one in hurried flight, but he was too absorbed to be more than dimly conscious of anything save his own emotions.

And yet, slight as was this interruption, it served to agitate his mind and bring him down from the realms of imagination to the world of reality. His thoughts began to flow less easily and his tongue occasionally to stammer; the strangeness of his experience came back upon him with redoubled force; the chill influence of vacancy and emptiness oppressed him; his enthusiasm waned; what he was doing began to seem foolish and even silly.

Just at that critical moment there occurred one of those trifling incidents which so often produce results ridiculously disproportionate to their apparent importance. Through the open door to which his back was turned, a little snake had made its way into the room, and having writhed silently across the floor, coiled itself upon the hearth-stone, faced the speaker, looked solemnly at him with its beady eyes, and occasionally thrust out its forked tongue as if in relish of his words.

That fixed and inscrutable gaze completed the confusion of the orator. He suddenly ceased to speak, and stood staring at the serpent. His face became impassive and expressionless; the pupils of his eyes dilated; his lips remained apart; the last word seemed frozen on his tongue. Not a shade of thought could be traced on his countenance and yet he must have been thinking, for he suddenly collapsed, sank down on a rude bench and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable, and perhaps terrible conclusion. And so indeed he had. The uneasy suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing force. This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation of his faith.

"It is absurd, it is impossible, that an infinite Spirit of love and wisdom could have planned this repulsive adventure! I have been misled! I am the victim of a delusion!" he said to himself, in shame and bitterness.

To him, Christianity had been not so much a system of doctrines based upon historical proofs, as emotions springing from his own heart. He believed in another world not because its existence had been testified to by others, but because he daily and hourly entered its sacred precincts. He had faith in God, not because He had spoken to apostles and prophets, but because He had spoken to David Corson. Having received direct communication from the Divine Spirit, how could he doubt? What other proof could he need?

Suddenly, without warning and without preparation, the foundation upon which he had erected the superstructure of his faith crumbled and fell. He had been deceived! The communications were false! They had originated in his own soul, and were not really the voice of God.

Through this suspicion, as through a suddenly-opened door, the powers of hell rushed into his soul and it became the theater of a desperate battle between the good and evil elements of life. Doubt grappled with faith; self-gratification with self-restraint; despair with hope; lust with purity; body with soul.

He heard again the mocking laughter of the quack, and the stinging words of his cynical philosophy once more rang in his ears. What this coarse wretch had said was true, then! Religion was a delusion, and he had been spending the best portion of his life in hugging it to his bosom. Much of his youth had already passed and he had not as yet tasted the only substantial joys of existence,—money, pleasure, ambition, love! He felt that he had been deceived and defrauded.

A contempt for his old life and its surroundings crept upon him. He began to despise the simple country people among whom he had grown up, and those provincial ideas which they cherished in the little, unknown nook of the world where they stagnated.

During a long time he permitted himself to be borne upon the current of these thoughts without trying to stem it, till it seemed as if he would be swept completely from his moorings. But his trust had been firmly anchored, and did not easily let go its hold. The convictions of a lifetime began to reassert themselves. They rose and struggled heroically for the possession of his spirit.

Had the battle been with the simple abstraction of philosophic doubt, the good might have prevailed, but there obtruded itself into the field the concrete form of the gypsy. The glance of her lustrous eye, the gleam of her milk-white teeth, the heaving of her agitated bosom, the inscrutable but suggestive expression of her flushed and eager face, these were foes against which he struggled in vain. A feverish desire, whose true significance he did not altogether understand, tugged at his heart, and he felt himself drawn by unseen hands toward this mysterious and beautiful being. She seemed to him at that awful moment, when his whole world of thought and feeling was slipping from under his feet, the one only abiding reality. She at least was not an impalpable vision, but solid, substantial, palpitating flesh and blood. Like continuously advancing waves which sooner or later must undermine a dyke, the passions and suspicions of his newly awakened nature were sapping the foundations of his belief.

At intervals he gained a little courage to withstand them, and at such moments tried to pray; but the effort was futile, for neither would the accustomed syllables of petition spring to his lips, nor the feelings of faith and devotion arise within his heart. He strove to convince himself that this experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away. He lifted his head and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth. Its eyes were fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive certainties, as disgust became loathing. The battle had ended. The mystic had been defeated. This sudden collapse had come because the foundations of his faith had been honeycombed. The innocent serpent had been, not the cause, but the occasion.

Influences had been at work, of which the Quaker had remained unconscious. He had been observing, without reflecting upon, many facts in the lives of other men, experiences in his own heart, and apparent inconsistencies in the Bible. There was also a virus whose existence he did not suspect running in his very blood! And now on top of the rest came the bold skepticism of the quack, and the bewildering beauty of the gypsy.

Yes, the preliminary work had been done! We never know how rotten the tree is until it falls, nor how unstable the wall until it crumbles. And so in the moral natures of men, subtle forces eat their way silently and imperceptibly to the very center.

A summer breeze overthrows the tree, the foot of a child sets the wall tottering; a whisper, a smile, even the sight of a serpent, is the jar that upsets the equilibrium of a soul.

The Quaker rose from his seat in a fever of excitement. He seized the Bible lying open on the table, hurled it frantically at the snake and flung himself out of the open door into the sunshine. A wild consciousness of liberty surged over him.

"I am free," he exclaimed aloud. "I have emancipated myself from superstition. I am going forth into the world to assert myself, to gratify my natural appetites, to satisfy my normal desires. It was for this that life was given. I have too long believed that duty consisted in conquering nature. I now see that it lies in asserting it. I have too long denied myself. I will hereafter be myself. That man was right—there is no law above the human will."



CHAPTER VII.

THE CHANCE WORD

"A man reforms his habits altogether or not at all." —Bacon.

David was not mistaken in his vague impression that he had heard a sob and footsteps outside the cabin door.

The little band of lumbermen abandoning their camp in the early light of the morning for another clearing still farther in the wilderness, had already covered several miles of their journey when their leader suddenly discovered that he had forgotten his axe, and with a wild volley of oaths turned back to get it.

Even in that region, where new types of men sprang up like new varieties of plants after a fire has swept over a clearing, there was not to be found a more unique and striking personality than Andy McFarlane. In physique he was of gigantic proportions, his hair and beard as red as fire, his voice loud and deep, his eyes blue and piercing. Clad in the gay-colored woolen shirt, the rough fur cap, and the high-topped boots of a lumberman, his appearance was bold and picturesque to the last degree.

Nor were his mental powers inferior to his physical. Although unable to read or write, he could both reason and command. His keen perceptions, his ready wit, his forcible logic and his invincible will had made him a leader among men and the idol of the rude people among whom he passed his days.

Repelled and disgusted with those manifestations of the religious life with which alone he was familiar, he was still an unconscious worshiper. The woods, the hills, the rivers and the stars awoke within him a response to the beautiful, the sublime and awe-inspiring in the natural universe.

But because of ignorance, the mysteries of existence which ought to have made him devout had only rendered him superstitious, though, all unknown to himself, his bosom was full of inflammable materials of a deeply religious life. A spark fell upon them that Sunday morning and kindled them into a conflagration. Nothing else can so enrage a nature like his as having to retrace its steps. He could have walked a hundred miles straight forward without a feeling of fatigue or a sense of hardship; but every backward step of his journey had put him more out of temper. He reached the clearing in a towering passion and was bewildered at hearing in what he supposed to be a deserted room, the sound of a human voice in whose tones there was a peculiar quality which aroused his interest and perhaps excited his superstition. He crept toward the rude cabin on his tiptoes, paused and listened. What he heard was the voice of the young mystic, pouring out his heart in prayer.

For the first time in his life McFarlane gave serious attention to a petition addressed to the Supreme Being. Other prayers had disgusted him because of their vulgar familiarity with the Deity, or repelled him by their hypocrisy; but there was something so sincere and simple in the childlike words which issued from the cabin as to quicken his soul and turn his thoughts upon the mysteries of existence. He had received the gift of life as do the eagles and the lions—without surprise. Had any one asked him: "Andy McFarlane, what is life?" he would have answered: "Life? Why it is just life."

But suddenly a voice, heard in the quiet of a wilderness, a voice full of tenderness and pathos, issuing from unknown and invisible lips and ascending into the vast and illimitable spaces of air, threw wide open the gates of mystery. His heart was instantly emptied of its passions; his soul grew calm and his whole nature became as impressionable as wax.

When at length the prayer had ended and the sermon began, every power of his mind was strained to its utmost capacity, and he listened as if for life. The buried germs of desires and aspirations of which he had never dreamed were quickened into life with the rapidity of the outburst of vegetation in a polar summer. Words and phrases which had hitherto seemed to him the utterances of fools or madmen, became instinct with a marvelous beauty and a wondrous meaning. They flashed like balls of fire. They pierced like swords. They aroused like trumpets. Such was the susceptibility of this great soul, and such was the power of that simple eloquence.

Andy McFarlane, the child of poverty, the rude lumberman, the hardy frontiersman, was by nature a poet and a seer, and this was his new birth into his true inheritance. Those eyes which had never wept, swam in tears. Those knees which had never trembled before the visible, shook in the presence of the unseen.

The emotions have their limitations as well as the thoughts, and McFarlane had endured all that he was capable of sustaining. With a profound sob, in which he uttered the feelings he could not speak, he turned and fled. It was this sob and these footsteps which David heard.

Plunging into the depths of the forest as a wounded animal would have done, he cast himself upon the bosom of the earth at the foot of a great tree, to find solitude and consolation.

There are wounds in the soul too deep to be healed by the balm which exudes from the visible elements of Nature. There are longings and aspirations which the palpable and audible cannot satisfy. Not what he sees and touches, but what he hopes and trusts, can save man in these dark moments from the final despair and terror of existence.

Upon such an hour as this the lumberman had fallen. God had thrust Himself upon his attention. Instead of being compelled to seek a religious experience, he found it impossible to escape it.

The religious experiences of men in any such epoch possess a certain general similarity. Sometimes thought, sometimes action and sometimes emotion furnish the all-pervasive element. Whatever this peculiar characteristic may be, its manifestations are always most vivid and violent in ignorant periods, and along the uncultivated frontiers of advancing civilization. In those rude days and regions, the victims (if one might say so) of religion experienced nervous excitations and emotional transports which not infrequently terminated in convulsions. Days and nights, weeks and even months, were often spent by them in struggles which were always painful and often terrible.

Andy McFarlane had often enough witnessed and despised these experiences; but through those almost inexorable laws of association and imitation, they were more than likely to reproduce themselves in him. And so indeed they did. Under the influence of these new thoughts that had seized him with such power, he writhed in agony on the ground. A profound "conviction of sin" took possession of his soul and he felt himself to be hopelessly and forever lost. That hell at which he had so often scoffed suddenly opened its jaws beneath his feet, and although he shuddered at the thought of being engulfed in its horrors, he felt that such a doom would be the just desert of a life like his.

Hours passed in which his calmest thoughts were those of complete bewilderment and helplessness, and in which he seemed to himself to be floating upon a wide and shoreless sea, or wandering in a pathless wilderness or winging his way like a lost bird through the trackless heavens. However large an element of unreality and absurdity there may have been in such experiences, it is certain that changes of the most startling and permanent character were often wrought in the natures of those who passed through them, and when McFarlane at last emerged from this spiritual excitement he was a strangely altered man. He seemed to find himself in another and more beautiful world. Looking around him with a childlike wonder, he rose and made his way back to the cabin. He listened at the door, but heard no sound. He entered, found the room empty, and gave himself up to rude and unscientific speculation as to the nature of this mysterious adventure. Nothing helped to solve the problem, until at last he discovered the Bible, which the Quaker had hurled at the snake, lying upon the hearthstone. It did not explain everything, but it served to connect the inexplicable with the real and human, and he carried the book with him when he returned to his companions with his recovered axe.

That Bible became a "lamp to his feet and a light to his path." By patient labor he learned to read it, and soon grew to be so familiar with its contents, that he was able not only to communicate its matter to others, in the new and beautiful life which he began to live, but to give it new power for those men in the plain and homely language of which he had always been a master.

The lion had become a lamb, the eagle a dove. He moved among his men, the incarnation of gentleness and truth. Under his powerful influence the camp passed through a marvelous transformation. From this limited sphere of influence, his fame began to extend into a larger region. He was sent for from far and near to tell the story of his strange conversion, and in time abandoned all other labor and gave himself entirely to the preaching of the Gospel.

It was as if the spirit of love and faith which had departed from the Quaker had entered into the lumberman.



CHAPTER VIII.

A BROKEN REED

"Superstition is a senseless fear of God." —Cicero.

The address of the young Quaker in the meeting house and the interview with him by the roadside had opened a new epoch in the life of the Fortune Teller.

Her idea of the world was a chaos of crude and irrational conceptions. The superstitions of the gypsies by whom she had been reared were confusedly blended with those practical but vicious maxims which governed the conduct of her husband.

For her, the world of law, of order, of truth, of justice had no existence. The quack cared little what she thought, and had neither the ability nor the interest to penetrate to the secrets of her soul.

She had lived the dream life of an ignorant child up to the moment when David had awakened her soul, and now that she really began to grapple with the problems of existence, she had neither companion nor teacher to help her.

The two objects about which her thoughts had begun to hover helplessly were the God of whom David had spoken and the Quaker himself. Both of them had profoundly agitated her mind and heart, and still haunted her thoughts.

During all of Saturday after the interview, through the evening which she had passed in her booth, and far into the night, she had revolved in her mind the words she had heard, and attempted to weave these two mysterious beings into her confused scheme of thought.

Her disappointment at David's refusal to accompany them in their wandering life had been bitter. She did not comprehend the nature of her feeling for him; but his presence gave her so exquisite a happiness that the thought of never seeing him again had become intolerable.

For the first time she, who had been for years, as she thought, disclosing the future to other people, was seized with a burning curiosity as to her own. Up to this crisis of her experience she had lived in the present moment; but now she must look into to-morrow and see if the Quaker was ever to cross her path again. For so important, so delicate and so difficult a discovery it seemed to her that the ordinary instruments of her art were pitifully inadequate. The playing cards, the lines upon her hands, the leaves in her tea cup would not do. She would resort to that charm which the old gypsy had given her at parting, and which she had reserved for some great and critical moment of life. That moment had arrived.

As she enjoyed the most perfect freedom in all her movements, she snatched an early and hurried breakfast Sunday morning, told her husband that she was going to the woods for wild flowers, and set forth upon an errand pregnant with destiny.

With an instinct like that of a wild creature she made her way swiftly towards the great forest which lay at a little distance from the outskirts of the village.

Her ignorance, her inexperience, her sadness and her beauty would have stirred the hardest heart to compassion. Arrived at the point where she was to confront the great spiritual problems of existence, she might almost as well have been the first woman who had ever done so, for she knew nothing of the experiences of others who had encountered them, and she had scarcely heard an echo of the great life-truths which seers have been ages in discovering. She had to sound her way across the perilous sea of thought without any other chart than the faded parchment of the gypsy, and those few incomprehensible words which she had heard from the lips of the young Quaker.

It is good for us that upon this vast and unknown sea of life, God's winds and waves are wiser and stronger than the pilots, and often bring our frail crafts into havens which we never sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she passed into the silence of this primeval forest.

Neither David nor Pepeeta knew anything of each other's movements, but they started upon their different errands at almost the same moment and were pursuing parallel courses with only a low ridge of hills between them. Each was following the brightest light that had shone upon the pathway of life. Both were absorbed with the highest thoughts of which they were capable. As invisible planets deflect the stars from their orbits, these two were imperceptibly diverting each other from the way of duty. The experiences of this beautiful morning were to color the lives of both forever.

As soon as Pepeeta had escaped from the immediate environments of the village, she gave herself wholly to the task of gathering those ingredients which were to constitute the mixture she planned to offer to her god. She first secured a cricket, a lizard and a frog, and then the herbs and flowers which were to be mingled with them. Thrusting them all into a little kettle which swung on her arm, she surrendered herself to the silent and mysterious influences of the forest. At the edge of the primeval wilderness a solemn hush stole over her. She entered its precincts as if it were a temple and she a worshiper with a votive offering. Threading her way through the winding aisles of the great cathedral, she was exalted and transported. The fitful fever cooled in her veins. She absorbed and drew into her own spirit the calm and silence of the place, and she was in turn absorbed and drawn into the majestic life around her. The distinctively human seemed to slip from her like a garment, and she was transformed into a creature of these solitudes. Her movements resembled those of a fawn. Her great, gazelle-like eyes peered hither and thither, as if ever upon the watch for some hidden foe. It was as if her life in the habitations of men had been an enforced exile, and she had now returned to her native haunts.

As she penetrated more and more deeply into the wood, her confidence increased; she stepped more firmly, removed her hat, shook out her long black tresses, listened to the songs of birds piping in the tops of trees, and exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid her cheek against it and kissed the bark. She was prompted by the same instinct which made St. Francis de Assisi call the flowers "our little sisters,—" an inexplicable sense of companionship and fraternity with living things of every kind.

Her swift footsteps brought her at last to the summit of a low line of hills, and she glided down into an unpeopled and shadow-haunted valley through which ran a crystal stream. Perceiving the fitness of the place for her purpose, she hastened forward smiling, and, heated with her journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she drank beheld the image of her face on the surface of a quiet little pool. Small wonder that she stooped to kiss the red lips which were mirrored there! So did the fair Greek maidens discover and pay tribute to their own loveliness, in the pure springs of Hellas.

Refreshed by the cooling draught, the priestess now addressed herself to her task. Gazing for an instant around the majestic temple in which her act of worship was to be performed, she began like some child of a long gone age to rear an altar. Selecting a few from the many boulders that were strewn along the edge of the stream, she arranged them so as to make an elevated platform upon which she heaped dry leaves, brushwood and dead branches. Over it she suspended a tripod of sticks, and from this hung her iron kettle. Drawing from her pocket flint and steel, she struck them together, dropped a spark upon a piece of rotten wood, purred out her pretty cheeks and blew it into a flame. As the fire caught in the dry brushwood and began to leap heavenward, she followed it with her great brown eyes until it vanished into space. Her spirit thrilled with that same sense of awe and reverence which filled the souls of primitive men when they traced the course of the darting flames toward the sky. In the presence of fire, some form of worship is inevitable. Before conflagrations our reveries are transformed into prayers. The silently ascending tongues of flame carry us involuntarily into the presence of the Infinite.

Filling her kettle with water from the running brook, she stirred into it the herbs, the berries, the lizard, the frog and the cricket. This part of her work completed, she sat down upon a bed of moss, drew forth the sacred parchment and read its contents again and again.

"When the cauldron steams, dance about the fire and sing this song. As the last words die away Matizan will leap from the flames and reveal to thee the future."

Credulous child that she was, not the faintest shadow of a doubt floated across her mind. She thrust the parchment back into her bosom, and as the water began to bubble, leaped to her feet, threw her arms above her head, sprang into the air, and went whirling away in graceful curves and bacchantean dances.

There were in these movements, as in every dance, mysterious and perhaps incomprehensible elements.

Who can tell whether they have their origin in the will of the dancer alone, or in some outside force? The daisies in the meadow and the waves of the sea dance because they are agitated by the wind. The little cork automaton upon the sounding board of a piano dances because it is agitated by the vibrations of the strings. The little children in the alleys of a great city seem to be agitated in the same way by the hurdy-gurdy!

Perhaps the rhythmic beating of the feet upon the ground surcharges the body with electrical force, as by the touch of a magnet. There is a mystery in the simplest phenomena of life.

Pepeeta, dancing upon the green moss beneath the great beech trees, seemed to be in the hands of some external power, and could scarcely have been distinguished from an automaton! She had brought her tambourine, and holding it on high with her left hand or extending it far forward, she tapped it with her fingers or her knuckles, until all its brazen disks tingled and its little bells gave out a sweet and silvery tintinnabulation.

The dancer's movements were alternately sinuous, undulatory and gliding. At one moment her supple form, bending humbly toward the earth, resembled the stem of a lily over-weighted with its blossom; the next, a branch of a tree flung upward by a tempest; the next, a column of autumn leaves caught up by a miniature whirlwind and sent spinning along a winding path.

Her eyes glowed, her cheeks burned and her bosom heaved with excitement. She seemed either to have caught from nature her own mood, or else to have communicated hers to it, for while she danced all else danced with her, the water in the brook, the squirrels in the tree-tops, the shadows on the moss, and the leaves on the branches.

Following the directions of the parchment, she continued to spin and flutter around the fire until the water in the kettle began to boil. At the first ebullitions, she stood poised for an instant upon her toe, like the famous statue of Mercury, and so lightly that she seemed to be sustained by undiscoverable wings, or to float, like a bubble, of her own buoyancy.

Settling down at length as if she were a hummingbird lighting upon a flower, she began to circle slowly around the fire and sing. The melody was in a minor key and full of weird pathos. The words were these:

"God of the gypsy camp, Matizan, Matizan, Open the future to me— Me thy true worshiper, here in this solitude, Offering this incense to thee.

"Matizan, Matizan, God of the future days, Come in the smoke and the fire; Kaffaran, Kaffaran, Muzsubar, Zanzarbee; Bundemar, Omadar, Zire."

As the last syllable fell from her lips, the loathsome decoction boiled over, and the singer, pausing as if suddenly turned to marble, stood in statuesque beauty, her arms extended, her lips parted, her eyes fixed. Expectancy gave place to surprise, surprise to disappointment, disappointment to despair.

The lips began to quiver, the eyes to fill with tears; her girlish figure suddenly collapsed and sank upon the ground as the sail of a vessel falls to the deck when a sudden blast of wind has snapped its cordage.

While the broken-hearted and disillusioned priestess lay prostrate there, the fire spluttered, the birds sang cheerfully in the treetops, and the brook murmured to the grasses at its marge. No unearthly voice disturbed the tranquillity of the forest, and no unearthly presence appeared upon the scene. The great world spirit paid no more attention to the prone and weeping woman than to the motes, that were swimming gaily in the sunbeams.

As for her, poor child, her life faith had been dissipated in a single instant, and the whole fabric of her thought-world demolished in a single crash.

What had happened to the Quaker in the lumber camp, had befallen the gypsy in the forest. But while in his case the disappearance of faith had been followed by a sudden eruption of evil passions, in hers a vanished superstition had given place to a nascent spiritual life.

The seed of religious truth sown by his hand in the fertile soil of her heart already struck its roots deep down. She did not in any full degree comprehend his words; but that reiterated statement that "there is a light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" had made an indelible impression upon her mind and was destined to accomplish great results.

As she lay crushed and desolate in her disillusionment, her mind began of its own accord suddenly to feed upon this new hope. She could not be said to have been reasoning, as David was doing in the cabin. Her nature was emotional rather than intellectual, or at least her powers of reason had never been developed. She could not therefore think her way through these pathless regions over which she was now compelled to pass; she could only feel her way. The thoughts which began to course through her mind did not originate in any efforts of the will, but issued spontaneously from the depths of her soul, and as they arose without volition, so did they flow on until they finally became as pure and clear as the waters of the brook by whose banks she lay.

When her emotions had expended their force and she arose, an experience befell her which revealed the immaturity of her mind.

The idea of that "inner light" had taken complete possession of her soul, and so when she suddenly perceived a long bright path of gold which a beam of the setting sun had thrown along the floor of the forest, like a shining track in the direction of the village, she thought it had emerged from the depths of her own spirit.

Without a moment's hesitation she entered this golden highway and sped along! Not for another instant did she regret the failure of the gypsy god to meet her. She knew well enough, now, the way to find her path amid the mysteries of life! She had but to follow this light!

The shining pathway led her to the summit of the hill; and as she began to descend the other slope, it vanished with the sun. But she was not troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was coming was the one flowing through the farm of the Quaker. "Perhaps I shall see him again," she said to herself, and the hope made her tumultuously happy.

She had lost all consciousness of the flight of time, and now noticed with surprise that it was evening. The crows were winging their way to their nesting ground; the rabbits were seeking their burrows; the whole animal world was faring homeward. Some universal impulse seemed to be driving them along their predestined paths, as it drove the brooks and the clouds, and Pepeeta appeared, as much as they, to be borne onward by a power above herself. She was but little more conscious of choosing her path than the doe who at a little distance was hurrying home to her mate; so completely were all her volitional powers in abeyance to the emotional elements of her soul.



CHAPTER IX.

WHERE PATHS CONVERGE

"If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed; If not, 'tis true this parting was well made." —Julius Caesar.

Violent emotions, like the lunar tides, must have their ebb because they have their flow. The feelings do not so much advance like a river, as oscillate like a pendulum.

Striding homeward after his downfall in the log cabin, David's determination to join his fortunes to those of the two adventurers began to wane. He trembled at an unknown future and hesitated before untried paths.

Already the strange experience through which he had just passed began to seem to him like a half-forgotten dream. The refluent thoughts and feelings of his religious life began to set back into every bay and estuary of his soul.

With a sense of shame, he regretted his hasty decision, and was saying to himself, "I will arise and go to my Father," for all the experiences of life clothed themselves at once in the familiar language of the Scriptures.

It is more than likely that he would have carried out this resolution, and that this whole experience would have become a mere incident in his life history, if his destiny had depended upon his personal volition. But how few of the great events of life are brought about by our choice alone!

Just at sunset, he crossed the bridge over the brook which formed the boundary line of the farm, and as he did so heard a light footstep. Lifting his eyes, he saw Pepeeta, who at that very instant stepped out of the low bushes which lined the trail she had been following.

Her appearance was as sudden as an apparition and her beauty dazzled him. Her face, flushed with exercise, gleamed against the background of her black hair with a sort of spiritual radiance. When she saw the Quaker, a smile of unmistakable delight flashed upon her features and added to her bewitching grace. She might have been an Oread or a Dryad wandering alone through the great forest. What bliss for youth and beauty to meet thus at the close of day amid the solitudes of Nature!

Had Nature forgotten herself, to permit these two young and impressionable beings to enjoy this pleasure on a lonely road just as the day was dying and the tense energies of the world were relaxed? There are times when her indifference to her own most inviolable laws seems anarchic. There are moments when she appears wantonly to lure her children to destruction.

They gazed into each other's eyes, they knew not how long, with an incomprehensible and delicious joy, and then looked down upon the ground. Having regained their composure by this act, they lifted their eyes and regarded each other with frank and friendly smiles.

"I thought thee had gone," said David.

"We stayed longer than we expected," Pepeeta replied.

"Has thee been hunting wild flowers?" he asked, observing the bouquet which she held in her hand.

"I picked them on the way."

"Has thee been walking far?"

"I have not thought."

"It is easy to walk in these spring days."

"I must have found it so, for I have been out since sunrise, and am not tired."

"Thee does love the woods?"

"Oh, so much! I am a sort of wild creature and should like to live in a cave."

"I am afraid thee would always turn thy face homeward at dusk, as thee is doing now," he said with a smile.

"Oh, no! I am not afraid! I go because I must."

"I will join thee, if I may. The same path will take us toward our different destinations."

"Oh, I shall be glad, for I want to ask you many questions. I can think of nothing else but what I heard you say in the meeting house."

"I fear I have said some things which I do not understand myself," he replied, with a flush, remembering the experience through which he had just passed.

The path was wide enough for two, and side by side they moved slowly forward.

The somber garb in which he was dressed, and the brilliant colors of her apparel, afforded a contrast like that between a pheasant and a scarlet tanager. Color, form, motion—all were perfect. They fitted into the scene without a jar or discord, and enhanced rather than disturbed the harmony of the drowsy landscape.

As they walked onward, they vaguely felt the influence of the repose that was stealing upon the tired world; the intellectual and volitional elements of their natures becoming gradually quiescent, the emotions were given full sway. They felt themselves drawn toward each other by some irresistible power, and, although they had never before been conscious of any incompleteness of their lives, they suddenly discovered affinities of whose existence they had never dreamed. Their two personalities seemed to be absorbed into one new mysterious and indivisible being, and this identity gave them an incomprehensible joy. Over them as they walked, Nature brooded, sphynx-like. Their young and healthy natures were tuned in unison with the harmonies of the world like perfect instruments from which the delicate fingers of the great Musician evoked a melody of which she never tired, reserving her discords for a future day. On this delicious evening she permitted them to be thrilled through and through with joy and hope and she accompanied the song their hearts were singing with her own multitudinous voices. "Be happy," chirped the birds; "be happy," whispered the evening breeze; "be happy," murmured the brook, running along by their side and looking up into their faces with laughter. The whole world seemed to resound with the refrain, "Be happy! Be happy! for you are young, are young, are young!"

Pepeeta first broke the silence.

"I had never heard of the things about which you talked," she said.

"Thee never had? How could that be? I thought that every one knew them!"

"I must have lived in a different world from yours."

"What sort of a world has thee lived in?"

"A world of fairs and circuses, of traveling everywhere and never stopping anywhere."

"Has thee never been in a church?"

"Never until that night."

"And thee knows nothing of God?"

"Nothing except the gypsy god, and he was not like yours."

"And thee was happy?"

"I thought so until I heard what you said. Since then I have been full of care and trouble. I wish I knew what you meant! But I have seen that wonderful light!"

"Thee has seen it?"

"Yes, to-day! And I followed it; I shall always follow it."

"When does thee leave the village?" David asked, fearing the conversation would lead where he did not want to go.

"To-morrow," she said.

"Does thee think that the doctor would renew his offer to take me with him?"

"Do I think so? Oh! I am sure."

"Then I will go."

"You will go? Oh! I am so happy! The doctor was very angry; he has not been himself since. You don't know how glad he will be."

"But will not thee be happy, too?" he asked.

"Happier than you could dream," she answered with all the frankness of a child. "But what made you change your mind?"

"I will tell thee sometime; it is too late now. There is my home and I have much work to do before dark."

"Home!" she echoed. "I never had a home, or at least I cannot remember it. We have always led a roving life, here to-day and gone to-morrow. It must be sweet to have a home!"

"Thee has always led a roving life and wishes to have a home? I have always had a home, and wish to lead a roving life," said David.

They looked at each other and smiled at this curious contradiction. They smiled because they were not yet old enough to weep over the restlessness of the human heart.

Having reached the edge of the woods, where their paths separated, they paused.

"We must part," said David.

"Yes; but we shall meet to-morrow."

"We shall meet to-morrow."

"You are sure?"

"I am sure."

"You will not change your mind?"

"I could not if I would."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

At the touch of their hands their young hearts were swayed by tender and tumultuous feelings. A too strong pressure startled them, and they loosened their grasp. The sun sank behind the hill. The shadows that fell upon their faces awakened them from their dreams. Again they said goodbye and reluctantly parted. Once they stopped and, turning, waved their hands; and the next moment Pepeeta entered the road which led her out of sight.

In this interview, the entire past of these two lives seemed to count for nothing.

If Pepeeta had never seen anything of the world; if she had issued from a nunnery at that very moment, she could not have acted with a more utter disregard of every principle of safety.

It was the same with David. The fact that he had been reared a Quaker; that he had been dedicated to God from his youth; that he had struggled all his days to be prepared for such a moment as this, did not affect him to the least degree.

The seasoning of the bow does not invariably prevent it from snapping. The drill on the parade ground does not always insure, courage for the battle. Nothing is more terrible than this futility of the past.

Such scenes as this discredit the value of experience, and attach a terrible reality to the conclusion of Coleridge, that "it is like the stern-light of a vessel—illuminating only the path over which we have traveled."

Nor did the future possess any more power over their destinies than the past. Not a conscious foreboding disturbed their enjoyment of that brief instant which alone can be called the present.

And yet, no moment in their after lives came up more frequently for review than this one, and in the light of subsequent events they were forced to recognize that during every instant of this scene there was an uneasy but unacknowledged sense of danger and wrong thrilling through all those emotions of bliss.

It is seldom that any man or woman enters into the region of danger without premonitions. The delicate instincts of the soul hoist the warning signals, but the wild passions disregard them.

It was to this moment that their consciences traced their sorrows; it was to that act of their souls which permitted them to enjoy that momentary rapture that they attached their guilt; it was at that moment and in that silent place that they planted the seeds of the trees upon which they were subsequently crucified.



CHAPTER X.

A POISONED SPRING

"It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes and all princes from slaves!"—Seneca.

Early the next morning the two adventurers took their departure.

The jovial quack lavished his good-byes upon the landlord and the "riff-raff" who gathered to welcome the coming or speed the parting guest at the door of the country tavern. He drove a pair of beautiful, spirited horses, and had the satisfaction of knowing that he excited the envy of every beholder, as he took the ribbons in his hand, swung out his long whip and started.

If her husband's heart was swelling with pride, Pepeeta's was bursting with anxiety. An instinct which she did not understand had prevented her from telling the doctor of her interview with the Quaker. Long before the farmhouse came in sight she began to scan the landscape for the figure which had been so vividly impressed upon her mind.

The swift horses, well fed and well groomed, whirled the light wagon along the road at a rapid pace and as they passed the humble home of the Quaker, Pepeeta saw a little child driving the cows down the long lane, and a woman moving quietly among the flowers in the garden; but David himself was not to be seen.

"He has gone," she said to herself joyously.

On through the beech grove, around the turn of the road, into full view of the bridge, they sped.

It was empty! And yet it was there that he had agreed to meet them!

A tear fell from her eye, and her chin quivered. With the utmost effort of her will she could not repress these evidences of her disappointment, and with a spasmodic motion she clutched the arm of the driver as if it were that of Destiny and she could hold it back.

So sudden and so powerful was the grasp of her young hand, that it turned the horses out of the road and all but upset the carriage.

With a violent jerk of the reins, the astonished driver pulled them back, and exclaimed with an oath:

"You little wild cat, if you ever d-d-do that again, I will throw you into the d-d-ditch!"

"Excuse me!" she answered humbly, cowering under his angry glances.

"What in the d-d-deuce is the matter?" he asked more kindly, seeing the tears in her eyes.

"I do not know. I am nervous, I guess," she answered sadly.

"Nervous? P-p-pepeeta Aesculapius nervous? I thought her nerves were m-m-made of steel? What is the m-m-matter?" he asked, looking at her anxiously.

His gentleness calmed her, and she answered: "I am sorry to leave a place where I have been so happy. Oh! why cannot we settle down somewhere and stay? I get so tired of being always on the wing. Even the birds have nests to rest in for a little while. Are we never going to have a home?"

"Nonsense, child! What do we want with a h-h-home? It is better to be always on the go. I want my liberty. It suits me best to fly through the heavens like a hawk or swim the deep sea like a shark. A home would be a p-p-prison. I should tramp back and forth in it like a polar bear in a c-c-cage."

Pepeeta answered with a sigh.

"Cheer up, child," he cried in his hearty fashion. "Your voice sounds like the squeak of a mouse! B-b-be gay! Be happy! How can you be sad on a morning like this? Look at the play of the muscles under the smooth skins of the horses! Remember the b-b-bright shining dollars that we coaxed out of the tightly b-b-buttoned breeches pockets of the gray-backed Q-Q-Quakers. What more do you ask of life? What else can it g-g-give?"

"It does not make me happy! I shall never be happy until I have a home," she said, still sobbing, and trying to conceal the cause of her grief from herself as well as from her husband.

Nothing could have astonished the great, well-fed animal by her side more than this confession. In all his life he had never heaved a sigh. His contentment was like that of a lion in a forest full of antelopes. But if he was fierce and cruel to others, he was at least kind to his mate, and he now put his great paw around her little shoulders and gave her one of his leonine kisses.

"You are as melancholy as an unstrung d-d-drum," he said. "I must cheer you up. How would you like a s-s-song? What shall it be? 'Love's Young D-D-Dream'? All right. Here g-g-goes."

And at the word, he opened his great mouth and stuttered it forth in stentorian tones that went bellowing among the hills like the echoes of thunder.

Pepeeta smiled at his kindness and was grateful for his clumsy efforts at consolation; but they did not dispel her sadness. Her spirits sank lower and lower. The light seemed to have faded out of the world, and the streams of joy to have run dry. She sighed again in spite of herself, and in that sigh exhaled the hope which had sprung from her heart at the prospects of a new and sweet companionship.

She had divined the cause of her disappointment with an unerring instinct. It was exactly as she thought. At the last instant, David's heart had failed him.

On the preceding evening, he had hurried through his "chores," excused himself from giving an account of the adventures of the day on the ground of fatigue, and retired to his room to cherish in his heart the memories of that beautiful face and the prospects of the future. He could not sleep. For hours he tossed on his bed or sat in the window looking out into the night, and when at last he fell into an uneasy slumber his dreams were haunted by two faces which struggled ceaselessly to crowd each other from his mind. One was the young and passionate countenance of the gypsy, and the other was that of his beautiful mother with her pale, carven features, her snow-white hair, her pensive and unearthly expression. They both looked at him, and then gazed at each other. Now one set below the horizon like a wan, white moon, and the other rose above it like the glowing star of love. Now the moon passed over the glowing star in a long eclipse and then disappearing behind a cloud left the brilliant star to shine alone.

When he awoke the gray dawn revealed in vague outline the realities of the world, and warned him that he had but a few moments to execute his plans. He sprang from his couch strong in his purpose to depart, for the fever of adventure was still burning in his veins, and the rapturous looks with which Pepeeta had received his promise to be her companion still made his pulses bound. He hurriedly put a few things into a bundle and stole out of the house.

As he moved quietly but swiftly away from the familiar scenes, his heart which had been beating so high from hope and excitement began to sink in his bosom. He had never dreamed of the force of his attachment to this dear place, and he turned his face toward the old gray house again and again. Every step away from it seemed more difficult than the last, and his feet became heavy as lead. But he pressed on, ashamed to acknowledge his inability to execute his purpose. He came to the last fence which lay between him and the bridge where he had agreed to await the adventurers, and then paused.

He was early. There was still time to reflect. Had the carriage arrived at that moment he would have gone; but it tarried, and the tide of love and regret bore him back to the old familiar life. "I cannot go. I cannot give it up," he murmured to himself.

Torn by conflicting emotions, inclining to first one course and then another, he finally turned his face away from the bridge and fled, impelled by weakness rather than desire. He did not once look back, but ran at the top of his speed straight to the old barn and hid himself from sight. There, breathless and miserable, he watched. He had not long to wait. The dazzling "turn-out" dashed into view. On the high seat he beheld Pepeeta, saw the eager glance she cast at the farm house, followed her until they arrived at the bridge, beheld her disappointment, raved at his own weakness, rushed to the door, halted, returned, rushed back again, returned, threw himself upon the sweet smelling hay, cursed his weakness and indecision and finally surrendered himself to misery.

From the utter wretchedness of that bitter hour, he was roused by the ringing of the breakfast bell. Springing to his feet, he hastened to the spring, bathed his face, assumed a cheerful look and entered the house.

For the first time in his life he attempted the practice of deception, and experienced the bitterness of carrying a guilty secret in his bosom. How he worried through the morning meal and the prayer at the family altar, he never knew, and he escaped with inexpressible relief to the stable and the field to take up the duties of his daily life. He found it plodding work, for the old inspirations to endeavor had utterly vanished. He who had hitherto found toil a beatitude now moved behind the plow like a common drudge.

Tired of the pain which he endured, he tried again and again to forget the whole experience and to persuade himself that he was glad the adventure had ended; but he knew in his heart of hearts that he had failed to follow the gypsy, not because he did not really wish to, but because he did not wholly dare. The consciousness that he was not only a bad man but a coward, added a new element to the bitterness of the cup he was drinking.

Each succeeding day was a repetition of the first, and became a painful increment to his load of misery and unrest. The very world in which he lived seemed to have undergone a transformation. The sunlight had lost its glory, the flowers had become pale and odorless, the songs of the birds dull and dispiriting.

What had really changed was the soul of the young recluse and mystic. The consciousness of God had vanished from it; the visions of the spiritual world no longer visited it; he ceased to pray in secret, and the petitions which he offered at the family altar were so dull and spiritless as even to excite the observation and comment of his little nephew.

"Uncle Dave," remarked that fearless critic, "you pray as if you were talking down a deep well."

No wonder that the child observed the fact upon which he alone had courage to comment, for there is as great a difference between a prayer issuing from the heart and one merely falling from the lips as between water gushing from a fountain and rain dripping from a roof.

Some men pass their lives in the midst of environments where insincerity would not have been so painful; but in a home and a community where sham and hypocrisy were almost unknown these perpetual deceptions became more and more intolerable with every passing hour. Nothing could be more certain than that in a short time, like some foreign substance in a healthy body, his nature would force him out of this uncongenial environment. With some natures the experience would have been a slow and protracted one, but with him the termination could not be long delayed.

It came in a tragedy at the close of the next Sabbath. The day had been dreary, painful and exasperating beyond all endurance, and he felt that he could never stand the strain of another. And so, having detained his mother in the sitting room after the rest of the family had retired, he paced the floor for a few moments, and after several unsuccessful attempts to introduce the subject gently, said bluntly:

"Mother, I am chafing myself to death against the limitations of this narrow life."

"My son," she said calmly, "this has not come to me as a surprise."

He moved uneasily and looked as if he would ask her "Why?"

"Because," she said, as if he had really spoken, "a mother possesses the power of divination, and can discern the sorrows of her children, by a suffering in her own bosom."

The consciousness that he had caused her pain rendered him incapable of speech, and for a moment they sat in silence.

"What is thy wish and purpose, my son?" she asked at last, with an effort which seemed to exhaust her strength.

"I wish to see the world," he answered, his eye kindling as he spoke.

This reply, foreseen and expected as it was, sent a shiver through her. She turned paler, if possible, than before; but summoning all the powers of self-control resident in that disciplined spirit, she replied with an enforced tranquillity:

"My son, does thee know what this world is which thee fain would see?"

"I have seen it in my dreams. I have heard its distant voices calling to me. My spirit chafes to answer their summons. I strain at my anchor like a great ship caught by the tide."

"Shall I tell thee what this world of which thee has dreamed such dreams is really like, my son?" she asked, struggling to maintain her calm.

"How should thee know?"

"I have seen it."

"Thee has seen it? I thought that thee had passed thy entire life among the Quakers," he answered with surprise.

"I say that I have seen it. Shall I tell thee what it is?" she resumed, as if she had not heard him.

"If thee will," he answered, awed by a strange solemnity in her manner.

Her quick respirations had become audible. Small but intensely red spots were burning on either cheek. Her white hands trembled as they clutched the arms of the old rocking chair in which she sat.

"I will!" she said, regarding him with a look which seemed to devour him with yearning love. "This world whose voices thee hears calling is a fiction of thine own brain. That which thee thinks thee beholds of glory and beauty thee hast conjured up from the depths of a youthful and disordered fancy, and projected into an unreal realm. That world which thee has thus beheld in thy dreams will burst like a pin-pricked bubble when thee tries to enter it. It is not the real world, my son. How shall I tell thee what that real world is? It is a snare, a pit-fall. It is a flame into which young moths are ever plunging. It promises, only to deceive; it beckons, only to betray; its smiles are ambushes; it is sunlight on the surface, but ice at the heart; it offers life, but it confers death. I bid thee fear it, shun it, hate it!"

She leaned far forward in her chair, and her face upon which the youth had never seen any other look but that of an almost unearthly calm, was glowing with excitement and passion.

"Mother," he exclaimed, "what does thee know of this world, thee who has passed thy life in lonely places and amongst a quiet people?"

She rose and paced the floor as if to permit some of her excitement to escape in physical activity, and pausing before him, said: "My only and well-beloved son, thee does not know thy mother. A veil has been drawn over that portion of her life which preceded thy birth, and its secrets are hidden in her own heart. She has prayed God that she might never have to bring them forth into the light; but he has imposed upon her the necessity of opening the grave in which they are buried, in order that, seeing them, thee may abandon thy desires to taste those pleasures which once lured thy mother along the flower-strewn pathway to her sin and sorrow."

Her solemnity and her suffering produced in the bosom of her son a nameless fear. He could not speak. He could only look and listen.

"Thee sees before thee," she continued, "the faded form and features of a woman once young and beautiful. Can thee believe it?"

He did not answer, for she had seemed to him as mothers always do to children, to have been always what he had found her upon awakening to consciousness. He could not remember when her hair was not gray.

Something in her manner revealed to the startled soul of the young Quaker that he was about to come upon a discovery that would shake the very foundation of his life; for a moment he could not speak.

The silence in which she awaited the answer to her question became profound and in it the ticking of the old clock sounded like the blows of a blacksmith's hammer, the purring of the cat like the roar of machinery, and the beating of his heart like the dull thud of a battering ram.

As if reading his inmost thoughts, the white-faced woman said: "And so thee thought that I was always old and gray?"

As she uttered these words in a tone of indescribable sadness, a faint smile played around the corners of her mouth—such a marble smile as might have appeared upon the face of Niobe. In an instant more it had composed itself into its former sadness, as a sheet of pure water resumes its calmness, after having been lightly stirred by a summer wind.

So long did she stand regarding him with looks of unutterable love that he could not endure the strain of the withheld secret, but exclaimed hoarsely: "Go on! Mother, for God's sake, go on! If thee has something to disclose, reveal it at once!"

It seemed impossible for her to speak. The opening of the secrets of her heart to God before the bar of judgment could have cost her no greater effort than this confession to her son.

"David," she said, in a voice that sounded like an echo of a long-dead past, "the fear that the sins of thy parents should be visited upon thee has tormented every hour of my life. I have watched thee and prayed for thee as no one but a mother who has drunk the bitter cup to its dregs could ever do. I have trembled at every childish sin. In every little fault I have beheld a miniature of the vices of thy mother and thy father—thy father! Oh! David, my son—my son!"

The white lips parted, but no sound issued from them. She raised her white hand and clutched at her throat as if choking. Then she trembled, gasped, reeled, and fell forward into his arms.

In a moment more, the agitated heart had ceased to beat, and the secret of her life was hidden in its mysterious silence. The sudden, inexplicable and calamitous nature of this event came near unsettling the mental balance of the sensitive and highly organized youth. Coming as it did upon the very heels of the experiences which had so thoroughly shaken his faith in the old life, he felt himself to be the target for every arrow in the quiver of misfortune.

He seemed to himself not so much like a boat that had sprung a single leak, as like one out of which every nail had been pulled and the joints left open to the inrushing waters.

Into the unfilled gap in his mother's narrative, ten thousand suspicions crept, each displacing the other and leaving him more and more in darkness and in dread with regard to the origin of his own life. Wherever he went and whatever he did these confused suspicions resounded in his ears like the murmur in a seashell.

He did not dare communicate this story even to his sister; for if she knew nothing he feared to poison her existence by telling her, and if she knew all he had not the courage to listen to the sequel. Perhaps no other experience in life produces a more profound shock than a discovery like that upon which David had so suddenly stumbled. It leads to despair or to melancholy, and many a life of highest promise has been suddenly wrecked by it. While he brooded over this mystery the days slipped past the young mystic almost unnoted; he wandered about the farm, passing from one fit of abstraction into another, doing nothing, saying nothing, thinking everything.

The world was shrouded in a gloom through whose shifting mists a single star shone now and then, emitting a brilliant and dazzling ray. It was the figure of a gypsy.

In his heavy, aching heart thoughts of her alone aroused an emotion of joy. As other objects lost their power to attract or charm, she more and more filled all his horizon.

Her name was whispered by each passing breeze. It was syllabled by every singing bird. The old clock ticked it on the stairway. The hoofs of his horse which he rode recklessly over the country uttered it to the hard roads on which they fell—"Pepeeta, Pepeeta, Pepeeta."

Whenever he really tried to banish the temptations which haunted his soul, they always returned to the swept and garnished chamber bringing with them seven spirits worse than themselves.

He tried to look forward to the future with hope. But how can a man hope for harvests, when all his seed corn has been destroyed? If his father was bad, what hope was there that he could be better?

He made innumerable resolves to take up the duties of life where he had laid them down, but they were all like birds which die in the nest where they are born.

Pepeeta was drawing him irresistibly to herself; he was like a man in the outer circle of a vortex, of which she was the center. The touch of her soft hand which he could still feel, the farewell glance of eyes which still glowed before his imagination, attracted him like a powerful magnet. It was true that he did not know where she was; but he felt that he could find her in the uttermost parts of the earth by yielding himself to the impulse which she had awakened in his heart.

"A dark veil of mystery hangs over my past. My present is full of misery and unrest. I will see if the future has any joys in store for me," he said to himself at the close of one of his restless days.

Without so much as a word of farewell, he crept out of the house in the gathering dusk, and started in pursuit of the bright object that floated like a will-o'-the-wisp before his inner eye.

A feeling of exultation and relief seized him as he left the place made dark and dreadful by the memory of that tragic scene through which he had so recently passed; the quiet of the evening soothed his perturbed spirits, and the tranquil stars looked down upon him with eyes that twinkled as if in sympathy.

It is an old tradition of the monks, that when the sap begins to run in the vines on sunny slopes, a revolt and discontent thrills in the bottles imprisoned in the darkness of the wine vaults. Such a discontent and fever had been thrilling in David's veins during these warm spring days, when the whole world had been in a ferment of life, and he had been bottled up in the gloom and narrowness of the little country village; and yielding himself to the emotions that seethed in his breast, he broke all the tender ties of the past and went blindly into the future.

He had been suddenly fascinated by a beautiful woman and bewildered by an unscrupulous man; he had felt the foundations of his religious faith shaken, and discovered that his own life had sprung from an illicit passion. These are violent blows, and many a man has gone down before a single one of them. If the blows had been delivered singly at long intervals he might have survived the shock; but following each other in swift succession like great tidal waves they had literally swept him from his moorings.

Such collapses fill us with horror and questioning. How do they come about? Can they be prevented? These are the deepest problems of life, and our psychology is still impotent to solve them. We can detect and measure the dross in metals or the poison in drugs; but we have no solvent that will reduce a complex nature like David's into its original elements and enable us to differentiate a son's responsibility from that of his father.

We make bold guesses and confident affirmations as to the comparative influence of heredity and environment. We enter into learned disputations as to the blessing or the bane of an education such as his. But every such case is still a profound and insoluble mystery. The most comprehensive laws and the most careful generalizations meet with too many exceptions to enable us to form a science. The children of the good are too often bad and the children of the bad too often good to permit us to dogmatize about heredity. We learn as our experience deepens and our horizon widens to regard such collapses with a compassionate sympathy and a humbled consciousness of our own unfitness to judge and condemn. Whether we create our individuality or only bring it to light—is the question that makes us stumble! But while we move in the midst of uncertainties in this realm, there is another in which we walk in the glare of noonday. We know beyond the peradventure of a doubt that whatever may be the origin of such weakness as that of the young mystic, the results are always inevitable! Nature never asks any questions nor makes any allowances. To her mind, sin is sin! Whatsoever a man sows—that shall he also reap. Whether he yield to evil voluntarily or be driven into it by resistless force; whether he sin because of a self-originating propensity or because his father sinned before him, is all one to those resistless executors of Nature's law, sickness, sorrow, disaster, death!

No man ever defeated Nature! No man ever will! From the instant when he turned his back upon his home, David's fate was sealed. He was playing against a certainty and he knew it. But he ought to have remembered it! It was of this that he ought to have been thinking, and not of the gypsy's eyes!

Sometimes such men escape from the final catastrophe of the long series; but not from the intermediate lashings!

This brutal, idiotic step of Corson's looks like a final plunge; a fatal fall; a hopeless retrogression. But we must not judge prematurely. "Man advances; but in spiral lines," said Goethe. The river goes forward, in spite of its eddies. You can complete a geometric circle from a minute portion of its curve; but not a human cycle. We can not predict the final issue of a human life until the last sigh is drawn.



CHAPTER XI.

THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

"To tell men they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair."—Froude.

Although David did not know the exact route the quack had laid out for his journey, he was certain that it would be easy enough to trace him in that sparsely-settled region, and so he turned his face in the direction in which the equipage vanished when he watched it from the barn. His movements did not seem to come from his own volition but to originate in something external. He had a sense of yielding to necessity. There are heroic moments in our lives, when that subtle force we call our "will" demonstrates, or at all events persuades us, that we are "free." There are others, like those through which the young adventurer was now passing, when we experience a feeling of utter helplessness amidst cosmic forces and believe ourselves to be straws in a mighty wind or ill-fated stars borne along a predestined orbit.

Surrendering himself to the current of events, the recalcitrant Quaker escaped for a time the painful consciousness of personal responsibility.

The tranquil stars above him seemed to look down upon the wanderer in silent approval. The night birds chanted their congratulations from the tree tops, and reading his own thoughts into their songs he imagined he heard them saying, "Let each one find his mate; let each one find his mate."

The cool night breeze caressed and kissed him as it hurried by on silent wings, and for an hour or two he tramped along with a peace in his heart which seemed to be a reflection from the outside world.

But gradually a change came over the face of nature, and this, too, reflected itself in the mirror of his soul.

In the heavens above him the clouds commenced to gather like hostile armies. They skirmished, sent out their flying battalions and then fell upon each other in irresistible fury. Great, jagged flashes of lightning, like sword thrusts from gigantic and hidden hands rent the sky; wild crashes of thunder pealed through the reverberating dome of heaven; the rain fell in torrents; the elements of nature seemed to have evaded their master, vaulted their barriers and precipitated themselves in a furious struggle.

The lonely pilgrim perceived the resemblance which his conflicting emotions bore to this wild scene, and smiled grimly. He found in all this tumult a justification for the tempest in his soul.

It was not until the light of morning struggled through this universal gloom, that the weary and bedraggled traveler entered the outskirts of the then straggling but growing and busy village of Hamilton. Tired in body and benumbed in mind, he made his way to the hotel, conscious only of his desire and determination to look once more upon the face of the woman whose image was so indelibly impressed upon his mind.

Approaching the desk he nervously asked if the doctor was among the guests, flushed at the answer, demanded a room, ascended the steep staircase, and was soon in bed and asleep. Fatigued by his long tramp, he did not awaken until after noon, and then, having bathed, dressed and broken his long fast, he knocked at the door of the room occupied by the doctor and his wife.

There was a quick but gentle step in answer to his summons, and at the music of that footfall his heart beat tumultuously. The door opened, and before him stood the woman who had brought about this mysterious train of events in his life.

She started back as she saw him, with an involuntary and timid motion, but so great was her surprise and joy that she could not control her speech or action sufficiently to greet him.

"Who is there?" cried the doctor, in his loud, imperative voice.

"Mr. Corson," she answered in tones that were scarcely audible.

"Corson? Who the d-d-deuce is Corson, and what the deuce does he want?" he asked, rising and approaching the door.

The instant his eyes fell on the countenance of the Quaker, he threw up both hands and uttered a prolonged whistle of astonishment.

"The preacher!" he exclaimed. "The lost is found. The p-p-prodigal has returned. Come in, and let us k-k-kill the fatted calf!"

Coarse as the welcome was, it was full of sincerity, and its heartiness was like balm to the wounded spirit of the youth. He grasped the extended hand and permitted himself to be drawn into the room.

Pepeeta, who had recovered from the first shock of surprise and delight, came forward and greeted him with a shy reserve. She gave him her hand, and its gentle touch reanimated his soul. She smiled at him,—a gracious smile, and its light illumined the darkness of his heart. His sadness vanished. He once more felt an emotion of joy.

The excitement of their meeting having subsided they seated themselves, David in an easy chair, the doctor on the broad couch, and Pepeeta on a little ottoman at his feet. Vivid green curtains partially obscured the bright sunshine which beat upon the windows. The wall-paper was cheap, vulgar, faded. On the floor was an old ingrain carpet full of patches and spattered with ink stains. A blue-bottle fly buzzed and butted his head against the walls, and through the open casement hummed the traffic of the busy little town.

Nothing could have been more expressive of triumph and delight than the face of the quack. Whenever his feelings were particularly bland and expansive, he had a way of taking the ends of his enormous moustache and twirling them between his spatulate thumbs and fingers. He did this now, and twisted them until the coarse hairs could be heard grating against each other.

"Well, well!" he said, "so you could not resist the temptation? Ha! ha! ha! No wonder! It's not every young fellow behind the p-p-plow-tail that has a fortune thrust under his nose. Shows your g-g-good sense. I was right. I always am. I knew you were too bright a man to hide your light under a half b-b-bushel of a village like that. In those seven-by-nine towns, all the sap dries out of men, and before they are forty they begin to rattle around like peas in a p-p-pod. In such places young men are never anything but milk sops, and old men anything but b-b-bald-headed infants! You needed to see the world, young man. You required a teacher. You have put yourself into good hands, and if you stay with me you shall wear d-d-diamonds."

"Whatever the results may be, I have determined to make the experiment," said David, shrugging his shoulders.

"Right you are. But what b-b-brought you round? You were as stiff as a ramrod when I left you."

"Circumstances over which I had no control, and which I want to forget as soon as possible. My old life has ended and I have come to seek a new one."

"A new life? That's good. Well—we will show it to you, P-P-Pepeeta and I! We will show you."

"The sooner the better. What am I to do?"

"Not too fast! There are times when it is better to g-g-go slow, as the snail said to the lightning. We must make a b-b-bargain."

"Make it to suit yourself."

"You d-d-don't expect me to stick to my old offer, I reckon. When I made it, Mahomet went to the m-m-mountain, and now the mountain comes to Mahomet; see?"

"Do as you please, I am in no mood to split hairs, nor pennies. All I ask is a chance to put my foot upon the first round of the ladder and if I do not get to the top, I shall not hold you responsible," David replied, dropping the "thees" of his Quaker life, in his determination to divest himself of all its customs as rapidly as he could.

"Hi! hi! There's fire in the flint! Good thing! you don't want to split pennies! Well, if you d-d-don't, I don't. You take me on the right side, D-D-Davy. I'll do the square thing by you—see if I d-d-don't. Let's have a drink. Bring the bottle, Pepeeta!"

She went to the mantel and returned with a flask and two glasses. The quack filled them both and passed one to David. It was the first time in his life that he had ever even smelt an intoxicant. He recoiled a little; but having committed himself to his new life, he determined to accept all that it involved. He lifted the fiery potion to his lips, and drank.

"Hot, is it, my son?" cried the doctor, laughing uproariously at his wry face. "You Quakers drink too much water! Freezes inside of you and t-t-turns you into what you might call two-p-p-pronged icicles. Give me men with red blood in their veins! And there's nothing makes b-b-blood red like strong liquors!"

The whisky revived the courage and loosened the tongue of the youth. The repugnance which he had instinctively felt for the vulgar quack began to mellow into admiration. He asked and answered many questions.

"What part am I to take in this business?" he asked.

"What part are you to take in the business? That's good, 'Never put off till to-morrow what you can d-d-do to-day.' 'Business first and then pleasure.' 'The soul of business is dispatch.' These are good mottoes, my lad. I learned them from the wise men; but if I had not learned them, I should have invented them. What's your p-p-part of the business, says you; listen! You are to be its m-m-mouth-piece. That tongue of yours must wag like the tail of a d-d-dog; turn like a weather-vane; hiss like a serpent, drip with honey and poison, be tipped with p-p-persuasion; tell ten thousand t-t-tales, and every tale must sell a bottle of p-p-panacea!"

He paused, and looked rapturously upon the face of his pupil.

"This panacea—has it merits? Will it really cure?" asked David.

The doctor laughed long and loud.

"Has it merits? Will it really cure? Ho! ho! 'Is thy bite good for the b-b-backache?' said the sick mouse to the cat. What difference does it make whether it will cure or not? Success in b-b-business is not based upon the quality of the m-m-merchandise, my son."

"Upon what, then?" said David.

"Upon the follies, the weaknesses and the p-p-passions of mankind! Since time began, a universal panacea' has been a sure source of wealth. It makes no difference what the panacea is, if you only have the b-b-brains to fool the people. There are only two kinds of people in the world, my son—the fools and f-f-foolers!"

Even whisky could not make David listen to this cold-blooded avowal without a shudder.

The keen eye of the quack detected it; but instead of adulterating his philosophy, he doubled his dose.

"Shocks you, does it? You will g-g-get over that. We are not angels! we are only men. Remember what old Jack Falstaff said? 'If Adam fell in a state, of innocency, what shall I d-d-do in a state of villainy?'"

The boldness of the man and the radicalness of his philosophy dazzled and fascinated the inexperienced youth.

This was what the astute and unscrupulous instructor expected, and he determined to pursue his advantage and effect, if possible, the complete corruption of his pupil in a single lesson; and so he continued:

"Got to live, my son! Self-p-p-preservation is the first law, and so we must imitate the rest of the b-b-brute creation, and live off of each other! The big ones must feed upon the little and the strong upon the weak. 'Every man for himself and the d-d-devil take the hindmost!' That's my religion."

"You may be right," said David, "but I cannot say that I take to it kindly. I do not see how a man can practice this cruelty and injustice without suffering."

"Suffering! Idea of suffering is greatly exaggerated. Ever watch a t-t-toad that was being swallowed by a snake? Looks as if he positively enjoyed it. It's his mission. Born to be eaten! If there was as much pain in the world as p-p-people say, do you think anybody could endure it! Isn't the d-d-door always open? Can't a man quit when he wants to? Suffering! Pshaw! Do I look as if I suffered? Does Pepeeta look as if she suffered? And yet she b-b-bamboozles them worse than I do."

The head of the gypsy bent lower and lower over her crocheting.

"She plays upon them like a fife! They d-d-dance when she whistles! Next to wanting a universal panacea for pain, the idiots want a knowledge of the future! Everybody but me wants to know what kind of a to-morrow God Almighty has made for him. I make my own to-morrows! I don't ask to have my destiny made up for me like a t-t-tailor coat. I make my own destiny. If things d-d-don't come my way, I just pull them! People talk about 'following Providence!' I follow Providence as an Irishman follows his wheel-barrow. I shove it! See? But that is not the way of the rest of them, thank Fortune! And so Pepeeta gathers them in! Strange fish g-g-get into her net, Davy. Back there in your own little t-t-town she caught some of your long-faced old Quakers, b-b-big fellows with broad-brimmed hats, drab coats and ox eyes, regular meetin'-goers! And there was that little d-d-dove-eyed girl. What was it she wanted to know, P-P-Pepeeta? Tell him. Ha! ha! Tell him and we will see him b-b-blush."

"She asked me if her father was going to send her to Philadelphia this winter," she answered, without lifting her eyes.

"I don't mean that!"

"She asked me whether I could tell them where to find the spotted heifer."

"The d-d-deuce, child! Why don't you tell me what she asked you 'bout D-D-Davy?"

"It is time for us to go to supper or we shall be late," she replied, laying aside her work and rising.

"Sure enough!" cried the doctor, springing to his feet. "The Q-Q-Quaker has knocked everything out of my head. Come on!"

He rose and began bustling about the room.

When Pepeeta glanced up from her work she saw in David's eye a grateful appreciation of her courtesy and tact, and his look filled her with a new happiness.

The disgust awakened in the Quaker's mind by the coarseness of the quack was more than offset by the beauty and grace of the gypsy. When he looked at her, when he was even conscious of her presence, he felt a happiness which compensated for all that he had suffered or lost. He did not stop to ask what its nature was. He had cast discretion to the winds. He had in these few hours since his departure broken so utterly with the past that he was like a man who had been suddenly awakened from a long lapse of memory. His old life was as if it had never been. He felt himself to be in a vacuum, where all his ideas must be newly created. This epoch of his experience was superimposed upon the other like a different geological formation. Like the old monks in their cells, he was deliberately trying to erase from the parchment of his soul all that had been previously written, in order that he might begin a new life history.



CHAPTER XII.

THE MOTH AND THE FLAME

"Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray By passion driven: But yet the light that led astray Was light from heaven."

—Burns.

A little before dusk the three companions started upon their evening's business. The horses and carriage were waiting at the door and they mounted to their seats. David was embarrassed by the novelty of the situation, and Pepeeta by his presence; but the quack was in his highest spirits. He saluted the bystanders with easy familiarity, ostentatiously flung the hostler a coin, flourished his whip and excited universal admiration for his driving.

During the turn which they took around the city for an advertisement, he indoctrinated his pupil with the principles of his art.

"People to-day are just what they were centuries ago. G-g-gull 'em just as easy. Make 'em think the moon is made of g-g-green cheese—way to catch larks is to p-p-pull the heavens down—extract sunbeams from c-c-cucumbers and all the rest! There's one master-weakness, Davy. They all think they are sick, or if they d-d-don't, you can make 'em!"

"What! Make a well man think he is sick?" the Quaker asked in astonishment.

"Sure! That's the secret of success. I can pick out the strongest man in the c-c-crowd and in five minutes have pains shooting through him like g-g-greased lightning. They are all like jumping-jacks to the man that knows them. You watch me pull the string and you-you'll see them wig-wig-wiggle."