e one crowing upon his shoulder. At her
exclamation, Julius, rugged and mossed as a sturdy hemlock, came to the
threshold to look over her shoulder, stripped to the waist, his neck and
arms shining with the grease.

"Here is thy son, O Kalia!" said Nicanor, halting. "He was by Thorney,
weeping because the world was not large enough for his adventure."

The mother received her son with tender welcome, but he held his arms
out to Nicanor, whimpering to be taken back.

"He runs away to play with boys while I am in the field, the wicked
one!" she said.

Julius looked down at her and at his boy with proud eyes. When he was
drunk he would beat his wife, but she loved him because he loved their
child. Nicanor looked at the three.

"He is worth having," he said, very soberly, nor thought that his words
might sound strange to them. He smiled at the boy, and left them, with
the mother's thanks following him.

And Julius, watching him across the field toward the road, said:

"Mark you how the boy hath taken to him? Dost remember, before he went
away from Thorney, how children ran from him, and even folk feared him
and his gall-tipped tongue?"

"I remember," Kalia answered. "Even I have punished the child by saying,
'The black man Nicanor will get thee if thou stop not thy crying,' until
for very fear he ceased. Never have I seen one so changed as he.
Juncina, the fish-wife, with whom I spoke but yesterday on Thorney,
saith that each day he goeth to lame Gallus, the blacksmith's son, who
is dying of a fever, and telleth him tales until the little one sleeps.
And when folk give him money for his tales, he will take it, though he
never asketh it, and of it he will give half to those three old men whom
each day he tendeth. It is not so long since he hath been back on
Thorney, yet even so all men wonder at the change in him. Verily, I
think that he must be in love."

"That is ever all you women think of!" Julius grumbled. "Were you to
have your way of it, it would be love that worketh all the miracles,
cureth all the illnesses, taketh the place of all the gods. Now come and
rub; I am sore in every joint and sinew."

Nicanor went home in a brown study, seeing never Kalia's broad, homely
face, untidy wisps of hair, brown bosom covered by her coarse gray
kerchief, but that face, young and fair and tender, which in his dreams
had become mingled with that Other Woman's face with holy eyes, who was
the Virgin Mother of all love.