u a sense of
humor? Ah,--there. Then you need never worry, or run away. As sunshine
and rain are to the dear earth, so are laughter and tears to every
living soul. Humor, dear, is the weather in which the spirit lives."

"But sorrow and tears?"

"Why, how can the sun make rainbows without rain?"

"You'll praise pain next!"

"That is a sacrament," he answered gravely, "the outward sign of inward
grace. For how else can God reach through selfishness down to the soul
in need?"

My pain had come back, but it was welcome now.

On the left were the solemn pines, and at their feet white flowers; on
the right were my fair birch trees; and the glade between lay in warm
sunshine.

"Lift up your hearts," whispered the priest, and I saw my trees, which
in winter storm and summer sun alike show their brave faces to the
changing sky.

"We lift them up unto the Lord," they seemed to answer.

"It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty," he responded, then
looked as it seemed into my very soul.

I saw the dear priest's face through tears, but when I brushed them away
the mist remained. He seemed remote, awful, and beautiful.

"There is a place," he said, "where souls awaiting incarnation, rest,
and from that place they come, borne by messengers. A messenger was
waiting in these woods, no evil spirit, my daughter, but one who came
bearing a child to you. She stands august and lovely at your back, and
in her arms the soul of a man-child, just on the verge of incarnation,
waits at the boundary of the spirit land.

"'The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.'

"That light is all around you, and I must go. This very ground is holy.
Fare you well."

* * * * *

Two days had passed since my dear Jesse left, then through the long day
I waited in the house, and the blue gloom of night swept up the glowing
cliff. It was then I heard the signal shot from the rim-rock, and told
my baby David that his father was coming home.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LOCKED HOUSE

_Jesse's Memoir_

The book of our adventures which we began together, was to go on through
all our years. We were too young to think how it must some time finish
at our parting, that one of us two was to be left, with only the broken
end, the pity of Christ, and every word a stabbing memory.

Since I lost Kate is four years to-night, and in all that time till now,
I never dared to enter the house where o