y, through the air in which dry haze
was thickening. The dead trees stood in the calm water, keeping silence
as it were, a hundred stalwart guards with fingers at their lips, lest
any sound should disturb the life that, with beneficent patience, was
little by little restoring the wounded body from within. Even the little
vulgar puffing market-boat that twice a day passed the windings of the
old river channel--the only disturber of solitude--was kept at so great
a distance by this guard of silent trees that no perception of her
passing, and all the life and perplexity of which she must remind him,
entered into Toyner's half-closed avenues of sense.

For two days the sun rose on Bart through the mellow, smoke-dimmed
atmosphere. Each night it lay in a red cloud for an hour in the west,
tingeing and dyeing all the mirror below the trees with red. No one was
there in the desolate lake to see the twice-told glory of that rosy
flood and firmament, unless it was this wondrous light that first
penetrated the eyes of the prisoner with soothing brightness.

It was at some hour of light--sunset or sunrise, or it might have been
in the blending of the mornings and the evenings in that confusion of
mind which takes no heed of time--that Toyner first began to know
himself. Then it was not of himself that he took knowledge; his heart in
its waking felt after something else around and beneath and above him,
everywhere, something that meant light and comfort and rest and love,
something that was very strong, that was strength; he himself, Bart
Toyner, was part of this strength, and rested in it with a rest and
refreshing which is impossible to weakness, however much it may crave.

It came to him as he lay there, not knowing the where or when of his
knowledge--it came to him that he had made a great mistake, as a little
child makes a mistake in laughable ignorance. Indeed, he laughed within
himself as he thought what a strange, childish, grotesque notion he had
had,--he had thought, he had actually thought, that God was only a part
of things; that he, Bart Toyner, could turn away from God; that God's
power was only with him when he supposed himself to be obedient to Him!
Yes, he had thought this; but now he knew that God was all and in all.

There came to him, trooping with this new joy of knowledge, the sensuous
sight and sound and smell of many things that he had known, but had not
understood, before. All the spring-times through whic