rench Village stared round-eyed at him.
What did this coming mean?

He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,
was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:

"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_
believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to
your families at once."

Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first
time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.
They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who
had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying
over the names of those they were saved to.

The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down
the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone
completely out of his mind in these last hours.

"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you
lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."

"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his
soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.

"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of
all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.
Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things
bigger than we are. We get no answer."

Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.

X

THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID

It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of
Promise.

The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He
still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from
which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He
still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the
sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running
down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had
chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the
grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the
enemy was gone.

But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the
forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even
the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and
hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.
For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But
the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kis