Chapter II

When Zeph left Miss Sophy’s door he had in his mind no specific plan of action, although from his brisk gait one would have supposed him to have in view a definite goal which he wished to reach in the shortest possible time. He walked on, looking neither to the right nor the left, till he reached the outskirts of the town, at the farthest possible remove from his own house. Here the land fell away abruptly into bottoms through which ran a stream, low and shrunken now from the long drought. The sight of the water was the first thing which roused him from the vague yet painful reverie in which he had been walking. As he looked into the water, he thought to himself, “If it was ’s high ’s I’ve seen it in the spring freshets, I believe I’d jump in and make an end o’ this misery. Perhaps ’twould be better for her if I was out o’ the world altogether. But a fellow ’d have to hold himself down, to drown in that depth o’ water.” And with a dreary smile at the thought he turned back towards the town. Suddenly a new idea struck him.

“Mebbe she’s gone home now, an’ she’ll be worse ’n ever, not findin’ any fire nor nothin’ to cook. I’ll go home an’ clear up, and get some steak!” He put his hand in his pocket and drew out the few bits of money he had there,—less than two dollars in all. He sighed bitterly as he looked at it. “Come to that, has it, an’ I hain’t bought a mouthful to eat to-day! Don’t take long to play a man out, lying by this way. But there’s enough for a good supper to-night!” And he quickened his pace.

How many times had he made just such bootless returns as this, each time lured on by a stronger and stronger hope that surely now she would have come back; he would see a light at the window telling him she was there; she must have come by this time! And each time it had been only a delusion; each time the empty, silent house and the cold, blackened hearth had mocked his misery anew, and he had turned away sicker at heart, more despairing than ever, to resume his hopeless quest.

“She likes beefsteak better ’n anythin’ else,” he said to himself as he entered the streets once more and looked on the brightly lighted shops on either hand. “I’ll get a first-rate good one; and there’s a bit o’ horse-radish left in the tumbler; she likes that.” And as he went on with his foolish, affectionate plannings, the hope in his bosom grew stronger, till he half persuaded himself that he knew she was at home waiting for him to bring the supper, or that his thus making ready for her would bring her before long. And yet he had done this very thing, hoped this unreasoning hope, scores of times before, all in vain. Why did he still continue to hope? He could not have told.

As he paid for the meat the butcher, eying him closely, said, “All well at home, Riker?”

Zeph gave a slight start, but recovering himself instantly, replied, “Thank you; I hope so. Hain’t been home since mornin’.”

“Don’t that beat all?” said the butcher, after he had gone, turning to his assistant. “Nobody’s never heard Zeph Riker admit it yet when his wife’s run off from him an’ he’s a huntin’ her; an’ he don’t never exactly lie about it neither. He’s always got his answer ready.”

“He’s a blamed fool he don’t bill her,” said the assistant.

“That’s so,” replied the other. “A little teched in the upper story, I reckon. But he’s a good fellow ’s ever lived; an’ she’s a handsome huzzy. I expect he can’t let go on her.”

“Well, I’d let go on her mighty quick if she b’longed to me. I know that! I say he’s a blamed fool!” replied the assistant, waxing wrathy. “Why, she’s been took up, ’n’ in jail. She was down to the beer-garden with that Nat ’n’ a lot o’ others, ’n’ they all got tight, ’n’ kicked up such a row the night watchman clapped the hull batch of ’em into the lock-up; ’n’ Riker he went right into court ’n’ paid everything, ’n’ got her out ’n’ took her home. She might ha’ rotted there for all me, if I’d been her husband.”

“When ye’ve got a wife o’ your own, mebbe ye’ll know more ’n you do now,” said the butcher, going to the door and looking after Zeph’s figure, now nearly lost in the darkness. “He’s a streakin’ it like lightnin’. I do believe the fellow thinks she’s to home waitin’ for him.”

“Where is she?” asked the assistant.

“Out on the mesa, in them freighters’ camp,” replied the butcher. “She’s been there three days, cookin’ for ’em, ’n’ trainin’ like Sam Hill. I tell you she’s a flyer! But she can cook, you bet. Tim was in to-day buyin’ veal ’n’ a turkey. He said they was goin’ to keep Sunday in that camp, and no mistake! they’d got Rusha Riker for cook and Sal Leeson for preacher! If Riker’d ever ask anybody where she’s gone to, he’d find out a heap quicker ’n he does. But he’s too proud. He never opens his head to nobody, an’ there ain’t nobody goin’ to volunteer to tell him; ’n’ so he goes sozzlin’ round, ’n’ wastin’ his time, ’n’ gettin’ out o’ pocket. I hain’t much patience with him myself, I own; but I don’t know how we’d any of us act if we was placed just ’s he is. It’s pretty hard tellin’.”

As Zeph drew near his home he walked faster. The more he thought, the surer he felt she would be there; the more he blamed himself for not having had everything ready for her at early dusk. “I might ha’ remembered,” he said to himself remorsefully, “that its bein’ Saturday night ’d be likely to bring her home, for she hain’t took none o’ her best things nor the youngsters’, an’ of course she’ll come back to get ’em even if she don’t stay.” And he broke into a run at the top of the hill above the Flat walling it to the west. Twinkling lights like fireflies shone all over the place; the humble homes there were thick set; a rush of emotion came over Zeph as he saw the glimmering lights. “All them homes,” he thought, “an’ not one of ’em ’s got such trouble ’s I have! God! but it’s hard!” And he pressed on, newly disheartened, as so many lonely souls have been, by the simple sight of home-lights gleaming.

As he turned the corner, where, if a light were burning in his own window it would greet his eye, his heart beat loud. “If she ain’t there this time I think it’ll kill me!” he muttered.

All was dark. She was not there. He stopped, gazed, threw down his parcels on the ground, and folded his arms on his breast. The moon was just coming up in the east, beyond the wide plains which stretched away, it seemed endlessly. Zeph looked at it with dogged dislike. “I don’t need no moonlight to-night,” he thought. “I forgot ’twas full moon. I might ha’ known she wouldn’t come home early if ’twas full moon. She’s foolin’ somewhere.”

The moon came up fast; its white light fell on the beams of the unfinished frame, which stood mute record of the terrible ruin of all Zeph’s plans and hopes of a home. The outlines of the building loomed out against the sky like a black skeleton, and smote Zeph’s very heart. “Just about ’s much home ’s I’ve got,” he said to himself. “A kind of a ghost it looks like, in this light, ’n’ that’s about what it is! I believe I’ll take the thing down. The lumber ’d bring considerable. But she’ll throw it up at me if I do; she’s always blamin’ me for not finishin’ it. I guess most folks ’d say the house she’s got’s good enough to run away from!” And Zeph strode on gloomily, with reluctant steps.

Entering the house, he looked around the room with a bitter expression on his face. “I’ve a mind to clear out too,” he thought. “What’s the use o’ goin’ on this way? But, no, I can’t. I can’t leave her so long ’s there’s a chance o’ gettin’ her right. She did care for me once, I know she did; an’ she is real fond o’ the children; there can’t nobody say she doesn’t love them even if she has got so set against me; an’ if she hadn’t got some good heart somewhere she’d hate them too just because I’m their father. I’ve heard o’ women’s turnin’ thet way till they couldn’t bide the sight o’ husband nor children, either one o’ them. It’s a kind o’ craziness comes over ’em. Poor Rushy! Seems’s if she must be crazy.”

While thinking these thoughts he was mechanically moving about the rooms, setting things into place, putting back the tumbled clothes into the drawers, making the beds; then he lighted a fire in the stove, and opening the drawer in the table took out a fresh candle and set it in the candlestick. “That’s the last but one,” he said, “but I’ll light it, an’ then if she does come in, she’ll know I’ll be back before long.”

He put the beefsteak on a platter by the candlestick. “So she’ll see it first thing,” he thought, “an’ know I got something good for supper.”

Then he went out, locking the door and putting the key in their usual hiding-place for it,—a hollow under the tying-post.

The thought of the freighters’ camp had at last occurred to him, and he could not rest now till he had found out if his wife were there. He groaned aloud as he turned his steps toward the mesa.

“I’d ’most as soon find her dead,” he thought, “as find her there! Don’t know but I’d sooner! If she’s been there all this time, ’tain’t for no good. But then she’s got the children along. She wouldn’t—” And Zeph clenched his hands and groaned again.

The “mesa” was a high table-land stretching away to the north of the town, not over a quarter of a mile wide on the top. Its sides were broken up into alternating shallow cañons and soft rounding ridges, grass-grown,—good places for grazing and shelter; at the base of the western side ran a little brook. It was a favorite spot for camping, and at times in the summer looked like an army encampment, so thickly dotted was it with white tents and wagons and picketed horses.

“It’s the strangest thing I never thought o’ that before!” mused Zeph as he struck out into the plain. “They’ll pay good wages to a cook, the boys will, when they’re in town; and Rushy can’t be beat at cookin’, that’s one thing.” And he tried manfully to keep out all other interpretations of her presence there. “If so be’s she’s here,” he reiterated to himself, “I’m a dumb fool to cry out ’fore I know I’m hurt worse ’n I am by just not knowin’ what’s got her.”

The moon was riding high in the heavens and flooding plain, mesa, mountains, all, with a light hardly less clear than sun, as Zeph finally climbed up through one of the shorter cañons and came out on the top of the mesa. The freighters’ camp was close before him,—so close that he started, and involuntarily retreated a step or two into cover of the ridge, lest he should be too suddenly seen. There was but one tent. From that came sounds of fiddling and riotous laughter.

“She’s there, for sure!” sighed Zeph. “Lord have mercy on me! Has she got them children in there this time o’ night?” and he glanced up at the moon. “Ten o’clock if it’s a minute! The poor young uns!”

There were ten of the freight-wagons arranged in a circle around the tent, some of them with rounded white tops. Cautiously Zeph stole up to one of these, parted the flaps at the back, and looked in. Surely his fatherly instinct had guided him to the spot. There lay his two children sound asleep on a straw bed in the bottom of the wagon. Surprise, joy, anguish, all held Zeph dumb. As he stood looking at them the boy raised his head and opened his eyes.

“Pappy, pappy!” he cried, and scrambled towards him, rousing the baby, who began to whimper.

“Hush, sis, hush!” he exclaimed. “Mammy said she’d whip ye if ye cried! It’s pappy! Don’t ye know pappy?” In a second more the little creature was in her father’s arms, and for a brief moment Zeph felt himself glad. Only for a moment, however.

“Zephie,” he said, “where’s your mammy?”

“In there,” replied the child, pointing towards the tent. “There’s a lot o’ men in there; they’re dancin’; the men’s beds is all took out.”

“Who’s there besides mammy? any other women besides mammy?” asked Zeph, his words stifling him as he spoke them.

“Nobody but Sal,” replied Zephie. “She’s here all the time to help mam cook. Mam says she never cooked so much vittles before. Mam reckons they must ben starved where they come from. Splendid vittles, pap, they has! It’s bully! Why didn’t you come too, pap? Mam was tellin’ some o’ the men she was a lookin’ for ye to come ’fore now.”

Bitter gall and wormwood to the father’s ears were these innocent prattlings of his boy. Too well he knew the gibe and jest with which his wife had told “some of the men” she was looking for him to appear on the scene. Too well he knew the “Sal” who was her assistant,—one of the most notorious women in the town, and sister of the man to whom Zeph still persuaded himself he owed all the misery which had come into his married life. He was mistaken. Nat Leeson was merely one man among many who had had right to mock at his dishonor; but it was Nat Leeson with whom his wife’s relations were now openly and flauntingly intimate. It was Nat Leeson for whom she really cared, so far as it was in her shallow, unprincipled nature to care for any man.

“We’re comin’ home to-morrow, pap,” continued Zephie; “mam says she’s tired out; ’n’ the teams is all goin’ to start up the mountains early Monday mornin’; so mam ’n’ Sally’s goin’ to cook up lots o’ vittles to-morrow for ’em to take, ’n’ then we’re comin’ home.”

“Be ye? That’s good!” said Zeph. “You tell mammy pap’s real glad ye’re comin’ home, will ye?”

“Stay, pap,” replied the boy. “You stay, too; there’s lots room in here. Sal and mam and us all sleeps in here. You stay; we’re goin’ to have turkey to-morrow,—an awful big one.”

“No, I can’t stay, my boy,” replied Zeph. “Mammy’s too busy. She don’t want me. You help her all you can, Zephie, an’ you be sure ’n’ tell her pap was here, ’n’ he was dreadful glad you was all comin’ home to-morrow, will ye? Tell her pap’s ben dreadful lonesome. Don’t ye forget now to tell her ’s soon ’s she comes to bed.”

“I’ll tell her ’n the mornin’,” said Zephie. “I’ll be asleep when she comes to bed.”

“No, you tell her to-night, Zephie,” said his father. “You stay awake till she comes. She’ll be here pretty soon, I guess. It’s late now.”

“Well, I’ll try,” said the child; “but, pap, I’ll be awful sleepy ’s soon ’s you’re gone. Why don’t you go up ’n’ speak to her in the tent?”

“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt the dancing!” said poor Zeph. “I don’t know any o’ the men.”

“Yes, Nat’s there! you know him,” said the child. “All the rest is freighters.”

This was the last drop in unhappy Zeph’s cup. It overflowed.

“I’ll—” he began in a loud tone. “No, I won’t either,” he continued; and kissing the baby, who had nestled herself to sleep in his arms, he laid her gently down on the straw, and then kissing the boy, said, “Good-night, Zephie; be a good boy, and take care of your little sister. Good-night; I must go now.” And as cautiously as he had come, he stole down the cañon and was gone.

Skirting along the base of the mesa for some rods, he climbed up again at a point some distance the other side of the tent, where stood a clump of huge pine-trees. Seating himself on the ground, partially hid by the trunk of the largest of these trees, he fixed his eyes on the tent. Now that he knew his wife was there, he would watch the place all night. It appeared to him that the moon stood still in the sky, so long did the moments seem before the freighters’ revelry broke up. At last, with loud laughing and talking, the party came out from the tent and separated for the night: the men going to their respective wagons, and his wife and Sal—with what breathless anguish he watched their every step!—to the wagon in which the children lay. Soon the lights were all out, and the stillness, the unutterable wilderness stillness, rested on the place. Zeph drew a long breath of relief. “That’s over!” he said aloud, and leaned his head back against the tree.

He had eaten nothing since morning, but he was not conscious of hunger or faintness. He had been under such a mental strain that all physical sensations were dulled. He could not have told, had he been asked, when he last ate food. Matters seemed to him to be fast approaching a crisis in his life; he felt a vague terror of he knew not what,—some terrible catastrophe approaching. He had felt this fear-stricken presentiment growing within him rapidly during the last three days. None of his previous experiences of suffering in consequence of his wife’s conduct had so told upon him. No one of her unexplained or only too well explained absences from home had crushed him like this last one. As he sat hour after hour in this strange solitude, alone, as it almost seemed, in the universe, with the vast star-set dome of the sky above him and the vast rayless plains stretching around him, the near mountains looming up colossal and black like an eternal barrier in the west, he lived these absences all over again in full and harrowing detail.

The first one,—that was three years ago. How well he recollected his fright when he found her gone; the angry incredulity with which he heard Gammer Stein’s half-implied reflection on her character that night; the joy with which he welcomed her back the next morning, and the full acceptance he had given to her story of having been watching with the sick child of a neighbor, the child too sick to be left, and no one in the house who could be sent with a message to him. It was not many weeks before he knew that this was a shameful, shameless lie. And after that miseries had thickened in his life,—his own house a gathering-place of the disgraceful and the disgraced; his wife oftener and oftener absent, sometimes with excuse, sometimes without; her intimate associates men and women with whom no self-respecting person would consort; his earnings wasted on fineries or worse.

“It’s been just a hell on earth, that’s what it’s been,” he thought, as he buried his face in his hands at some of the reminiscences. That brief interval of quiet of a few months during which the last child had been born,—the little girl from whose unconscious influence over the mother’s heart he had hoped much,—recurred to him now, in this bitter retrospect, merely as an intensification of his woe. “And me hopin’ its bein’ a girl might maybe save her! I don’t see why I thought that’d make any difference if the boy didn’t!”

How vividly he recalled the day when they were discussing the baby’s name; and his wife having expressed the desire to give it her own name, he had taken heart from that, and said to her meaningly, “Would ye really like to have her called by your name, Rushy?” and she, in her usual flippant tone, and yet he fancied with a shade of feeling in her face, had answered, “You’ve got the boy named for you, an’ I should think the girl ought to be named for me; that’s no more ’n fair;” and he had made haste to reply, “Of course ’tain’t, an’ I’d rather call her Rushy than any other name ’n all the world, ’n’ you know that, wife, without my tellin’ ye; ’n’ she’s goin’ to favor you in looks, too; anybody with half an eye can see that a’ready; so there’ll be two Rushy Rikers the first thing ye know.” And when he said this his wife colored, and said, “I hope to goodness she’ll turn out better ’n the first Rushy Riker!” And he, poor fool, had gone about for many a week hugging that exclamation to his soul as an omen and token of good coming to their lives. But it was short-lived. Before her baby was three months old the old demons of love of admiration, excitement, finery, folly, and sin had got full hold again of her weak and unstable nature, and all was as bad as before, or worse.

Then came the most flagrant of all her misdemeanors,—the drunken frolic at the beer-garden and the disgrace of the lock-up; and after that all sense of shame or of restraint seemed to leave her; and finally, only a few weeks ago, the most daring of all her escapades, when, taking the baby, she had gone to Denver openly in the company of Nat Leeson and his sister; then it was that Zeph, at his wits’ end, had sold some of their furniture and his kit of carpenter’s tools to get money for the journey, put the boy into Gammer Stein’s motherly keeping, followed and tracked her; and for the first and only time exercising his husbandly authority over her, had brought her home. But it was only an enforced return. She was sullen, reluctant, full of hatred and reproaches. “A pretty home it was,” she said, “to bring a woman back to, stripped of half the furniture, and not a dollar to buy anything with!” If he’d let her alone, she’d make her own living an’ not be beholden to anybody.

“Hold your tongue, Rushy!” cried Zeph, the only time in his life he had thus spoken to her. “Don’t you dare to talk to me about makin’ your own livin’! If you’ll stay at home an’ keep decent, I’ll keep ye in as good a livin’ as folks o’ our station needs! I’d ha’ had a good house done for ye now, if ye’d done’s ye’d oughter.”

“It’s easy makin’ excuses,” she retorted; “ye never did have no spunk, an’ it’s a mighty poor livin’ ye’ll ever get in this world. I donno what’s hendered your buildin’ the house ’fore now, ’cept your own laziness!”

“I’ll tell ye what’s hendered me, Rushy,” replied Zeph, thoroughly angered,—“runnin’ round all creation huntin’ you, ’n’ sellin’ my tools to get money to follow ye an’ keep ye from comin’ on the town! That’s what’s hendered me; an’ ’twill hender me, too, s’ long’s ye go on as ye’re doin’!”

As Zeph lived over this bitterest of all their quarrels his heart smote him remorsefully.

“I expect I was too fierce with her,” he thought. “Perhaps if I’d been real lovin’ then she’d ha’ come round. She’s been lots worse ever since then, ’n’ I expect I didn’t manage right. I’ll try ’n’ see if I can’t be different to her to-morrow when she comes home. She’s had the children along with her this time, ’n’ that’s some comfort.”

It was near morning when Zeph finally fell into an uneasy sleep. His sorrows pursued him even there, and he dreamed a nightmare dream of seeing his wife at the window of a burning house and being unable to move hand or foot to her rescue. He opened his eyes with the horror of this dream full upon him, and for the first second thought the dream was no dream, but actual truth; for the sky over his head and the whole front of the mountain range on his right were red as from the light of a conflagration. Bewildered, he sprang to his feet with a cry, but in the same second sank down again, saying, “It’s only the sun a comin’ up! Lord! How it scared me!”

It was the marvellous rosy dawn peculiar to high altitudes. So vivid, so fiery a glow does it spread over both sky and earth for a few seconds before sunrise, that when the sun is above the horizon, and the day fairly breaks, the light seems less, and not more, and the earth and sky darkened instead of illumined.

All was still in the freighters’ camp. A few faint upward curls of smoke in the distant town were the only signs of life in the beautiful landscape. As Zeph gazed on the picture he felt insensibly strengthened.

“’T don’t seem ’s if folks need to suffer so ’n such a world ’s this,” he thought; “things must come out right, sooner or later, somehow, if there’s any kind o’ reason ’n anything. It don’t look no ways likely that God set it all a goin’ jest to make folks miserable! I expect it’s all our own fault, somewheres, if things goes wrong! I believe Rushy ’n’ I’ll get on yet. If I could once rake ’n’ scrape money enough to take her clean out o’ this place ’n’ begin over again, that would be best; but how to fetch that about I don’t see!”

Time slipped by imperceptibly to Zeph absorbed in his reverie, and an hour or more had gone, when he was roused by the sounds of stirring in the camp. Hastily concealing himself in a ravine, he lay stretched along the ground, only his eyes above the edge of the mesa, and watched every movement. He saw his wife and Sal come out, the children following, the fires lighted in the camp stoves, the preparations for cooking begun. Presently he saw Nat Leeson stroll up towards the stoves and stop to talk with his sister.

“If I see him go nigh Rushy I’ll do some harm, I know I shall,” said Zeph. “I’ll not risk it. I’ll leave here.” And darting down the ravine he set off by a circuitous route, on which he could not be seen, towards home.

When he reached the outskirts of the town the church-bells were ringing. The sound seemed full of unwonted invitation to Zeph. It was long since he had been inside the walls of a church. In the first years of their married life Rushy had been fond of going to meeting of a Sunday, and he had been only too proud to go with her and see the admiration with which people looked at her handsome face and pretty clothes. Even then were to be seen, if Zeph had only had the wisdom to recognize them, the germs of all the misery and shame which time had since brought. But he looked on with the blinded eyes of a man’s first unreasoning passion, saw nothing wrong, thought no harm, feared no evil. He even shared the pride, which seemed innocent, in the undeniable fact that Rushy was the handsomest woman in the congregation. And now, alas, it was for Rushy’s sake, and because of her beauty, that he was ashamed to look any man in the eye!

A strange desire seized him to go this morning and hear what the preacher had to say. He looked down at his clothes. They were shabby enough, certainly; not at all what he would once have thought it necessary to wear to be decent at church. But Zeph had been down into depths from which all thoughts of trivial considerations had long ago vanished. He smiled half sadly as he turned towards the church door, saying to himself, “I wouldn’t have been caught goin’ to meetin’ in such cloes ’s these once; but I guess it don’t make any difference to nobody but me, ’n’ I feel a real call to hear some hymn-singin’ to-day. It’ll get rid o’ the mornin’, too, quicker ’n any other way. I hain’t got anythin’ to do but wait the day out till she comes home to-night. She won’t be down, I don’t suppose, before dark.” And Zeph slipped in and sat down humbly in one of the side pews nearest the door, which he knew were free to all. It was early. The bells he had heard were the first bells. No one was in the building except the sexton, who was bustling about, giving last touches of dusting to the pulpit Bible. Presently two women entered, bringing, one a large sheaf of white clematis blooms, the other a high vase filled with the feathery tassels of Indian corn and a few of the graceful, tall, sword-like leaves. It was the custom for the women of this congregation to take turns in decorating the church for the Sunday services; and there was much vying among them, and continual exercise of ingenuity, each to outdo the others in effective arrangement of flowers. As they walked up the aisle Zeph’s eyes followed them with astonishment.

“If that ain’t just common field corn, ’s sure’s I’m alive,” he said; “’n’ it’s prettier ’n the flowers be, heaps! Well, I never!” And for the moment he forgot his misery in watching the women dispose their bouquets on the reading-desk and table.

Presently one of them turned briskly and stepped down the aisle to look up at the desk to see if the arrangement could be improved.

“Oh, Lord!” said Zeph. And in the same instant he buried his face in his hands on the back of the seat in front of him. “That’s that Miss Burr I was askin’ after Rushy last night. I don’t want her to see me. She’ll be sure to spry round here askin’ if I’ve found her. She’s dreadful active.” And Zeph remained bowed over, his face hid from view, till he heard their steps leaving the church.

It was indeed Miss Sophy; and as she came down the aisle, her quick eyes catching sight of Zeph’s bowed figure, she said to her companion: “Just look at that man all doubled up there in the poor-pews. I do declare, I think it’s a shame to have any such thing’s poor-pews: it’s a kind o’ badge o’ disgrace to sit there; I’ve known lots ’n’ lots o’ poor folks that wouldn’t set foot ’n ’em, not if they never heard a sermon t’ their dyin’ day, they said. I always feel ashamed when I go by ’em ’n’ shut the door t’ my pew. It’s borne in on me ’tain’t Christian. I think the Catholics are lots better ’n we are about that,—lots. There ain’t anything but poor-pews ’n their churches, ’n’ that’s the way it ought to be,—free to all.”

“How you do talk, Sophy!” replied her companion, good Mrs. Jones. “Why don’t you be a Catholic ’n’ done with it, if you think their way’s so much better ’n ours?”

“I don’t!” retorted Miss Sophy,—“nothin’ o’ the kind. But I say they’ve got the right idea about seatin’ people. No wonder they get all the poor people;—I should think they would. I wouldn’t stir into our church if I couldn’t hire my pew, the way ’tis now; but ’tain’t right, ’n’ ’twon’t last, neither. You’ll see it don’t last. ’Twon’t be a great many years before there’ll be free sittin’s, ’s they call it, in every church ’n America.”

“Well, then there’ll be lots o’ rich people ’ll stay away ’stead o’ the poor people!” retorted Mrs. Jones. “Who wants to sit alongside o’ such a common-looking day-laborer ’s that?” pointing to Zeph.

“He’s clean enough,” replied Miss Sophy, eying Zeph closely as they passed out. “I wouldn’t mind sitting alongside of him. He must be awfully broken down, somehow, to be in here this time o’ day, sittin’ all scrouched into a heap like that. I’ve a good mind to go speak to him.” And she halted.

“Sophy Burr, you come right straight along out this minute!” exclaimed Mrs. Jones, raising her voice indignantly above the decorous whisper in which they had been conversing. “I do believe you’d take all the dead beats ’n this town on your shoulders if you could. You sha’n’t go near the man!” And as Miss Sophy, laughing, allowed herself to be dragged out of the doorway, Zeph lifted his head with a sense of relief and escape.

Just as the congregation stood up for the first singing, the door of the pew where he sat was timidly opened, and a lame old woman, dressed in rusty black, leading a little boy, edged shamefacedly in, glancing with a mute apology in her eyes at Zeph. Sitting down slowly and with difficulty, she motioned to the child to stand; whispering to Zeph, “I’ve got the rheumatiz so’t I can’t keep on my feet.” The child, shy, and unwonted to the place, refused to stand up, and clinging to her skirts began to whimper. Zeph reached out his hand to him, with a smile, and whispered, “You stand up here by me.” The little fellow yielded at once, the old woman looking on wonderingly at his sudden obedience to a stranger. When the singing was over, the child, instead of drawing close to her, nestled up to Zeph, and laid one hand confidingly on his knee. It was a small thing, a very small thing, but it comforted Zeph. Putting his arm round the little chap, he drew him closer, and resting his head comfortably against his shoulder, whispered, “Go to sleep, sonny, if you want to.” The boy looked up with a vague smile, nestled again, and shut his eyes. Zeph hugged him tighter still, stroking his hair, and thinking, “Poor little fellow! He’s got to be a man some day!”

The minister had risen in the pulpit, opened the Bible, and was reading his text.

What words were these, falling on Zeph’s ear? No wonder he started,—started so violently that the child opened his dozing eyes and looked up in alarm at his new friend. An audible exclamation had nearly burst from Zeph’s lips. He gazed at the minister with an emotion very like terror. Was this stranger, this man of whom he had never heard, speaking directly to him, him alone, of all that congregation? Had a message come straight from Heaven to his soul at this crisis in his life? Was it God, and no mere earthly voice, saying these words: “I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven”?

“‘Seventy times seven!’” repeated the preacher. “We have heard it so often that we do not realize what it means; we set it down as a figure of speech and let it go out of our thoughts. And so it was a figure of speech whereby the Master intended to convey to us the great truth that forgiveness is to last as long as offences last,—unto the very end, no matter how long the life, how bitter the offence. Is not that the way God deals with us? Day after day, year after year, have we not been offending Him, breaking His law, slighting His love? We are old, many of us; have we yet ceased to offend? Yet here comes this beautiful sun shining on us, forgiving us anew, this very morning.”

“Just what I was thinkin’ up on the mesa there,” said Zeph to himself, “only I didn’t put it that way.”

“And even if we took the numbers literally,” the preacher went on, “even then, do we live up to it? ‘Seventy times seven:’ four hundred and ninety. Can we look into our hearts, dealing honestly with ourselves, and say we have forgiven, any one of us,—forgiven so many offences as that? Friend, neighbor, husband, wife, how is it? Hast thou been hurt by any one four hundred and ninety times, and four hundred and ninety times forgiven the hurt,—forgiven it, wiped it out?”

It was a homely and realistic putting of the phrase, but it struck home better than a loftier one would have done. Not a pew in which some suddenly remorseful heart, thinking of some one especial offender, did not own, shame-smitten, “No, not so many as that;” and no one more swiftly, remorsefully, than the always gentle Zeph.

“That’s a fact!” he was saying in his thoughts. “’Tain’t been near so many times’s that; an’ I don’t know either ’s I’ve ever once really forgiven her, out ’n’ out, without layin’ it up to make next time harder; ’n’ that ain’t the way the Lord figures it. ’Twould go hard with us ef He did! When Rushy comes home to-night I don’t mean to say ’s much ’s one word t’ her about anythin’, only how glad I am to get her to home again.”

At the end of the sermon the preacher, his whole soul deeply stirred within him by the attempt to hold up in its true light, shape, color, to bring within his people’s real grasp the one eternal talisman,—talisman alike for life and death, for time and eternity, Forgiveness,—paused, and with bent head and trembling voice said, “Shall we dare now to utter the prayer—” He paused again. “Yes. Since the Master gave us the words, we must dare to use them; let us dare now to utter this prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses _as_ we forgive those who trespass against us.’”

Sobs were heard throughout the church, and after the benediction the congregation dispersed silently, as from a funeral service. There had indeed been many a grave closed forever in those last few moments,—closed, and a white stone set in token; it had been a moment of inspiration for the preacher, of salvation to the people.

Zeph passed out of the door, the little boy still clinging to his hand and the old woman hobbling by his side. The poor do not stand on ceremony with each other.

“That was drefful good doctrine he preached,” she said tremulously, “but ’t’s pretty hard to live up to. Guess he hain’t had no great crosses hisself.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied Zeph, slowly. “I was a thinkin’ mebbe he had had more ’n common, ’r else he wouldn’t ha’ thought it all out so clear. ’T seemed to me he felt all he was sayin’.”

“There’s things can’t be forgiven!” she said sullenly.

Zeph made no reply. Her words grated on him. The child looked up apprehensively as she pulled him away into another road. “I never see him take so to a stranger,” she said. “Guess ye’ve got children o’ your own.”

“Yes, two,” replied Zeph.

“He’s my grandson,” she said. “All I’ve got left out o’ three boys ’n’ two girls: all dead. But there’s lots o’ things worse ’n death,” she added gloomily. “I’ve lived long enough to know that. Good day t’ ye.” And she turned away.

“‘Lots o’ things worse ’n death,’” repeated Zeph, as he took his lonely road home. “That’s true; ’n’ then again ’tain’t true. While there’s life, there’s hope.” He felt himself strangely cheered and lifted. If forgiveness were so mighty a thing as the preacher had said,—and it must be, since it was all that God had or needed to save the world by,—what more could be needed to straighten out all the tangles of any one little life? He felt his heart full of a larger, better forgiveness towards his wife than he had ever before known; a warmer love than he had felt for many a month.

“There is nothing love cannot do,” the preacher had said. “The thing is, to be sure that the love is truly love, and not selfishness.”

“I know I love Rushy,” thought Zeph, “an’ ’tain’t selfish love, I know ’tain’t! I’d give her up to-day, if I could see any way she’d be better off without me.”

And with his heart full of such thoughts as these he sat down to wait patiently till night for her return.