tell you
at once. Never, never, never as long as I live can I go back to the
Skandinavia. All the years I've been with them I've just been lost in a
sort of dream world of ambition. I haven't seen a thing outside it. I've
just been a blind, selfish woman who believed in everybody, and most of
all in herself and her selfish aims. Can you understand? Will you? Oh,
now I know all it meant. Now I know the crime of it. And the horror of
the thing I've done, and been, has well-nigh broken my heart. Oh, I'm
not really bad, indeed I'm not. I didn't know. I didn't understand. I
can never forgive myself. Never, never! And when I think of the blood
that has been shed as the result of my work--"

"No." The man's voice broke in sharply. "Put that right out of your
mind, child. None of the blood shed is your doing. None of it lies at
your door. It lies at the door of others. It lies at the door of two men
only. The man who first set up this great mill at Sachigo, and the man
whose hate of him desired its destruction. The rest, you, those others,
Bull Sternford and Harker, here, are simply the pawns in the battle
which owes its inception to those things that happened years ago. I tell
you solemnly, child, no living soul but those two, and chiefly the first
of the two, are to blame for the things that have happened to-day. Set
your mind easy. No one blames you. No one ever will blame you. Not even
the great God to whom we all have to answer. I know the whole story of
it. It is my life to know the story of these forests. Set your mind at
rest."

"Oh, I wish I could think so. I wish I could believe. I feel, I feel you
are telling me this to comfort me. But you wouldn't just do that?"

The man shook his head.

"It's the simple truth," he said. Then he reached for his tea and drank
it quickly. "But tell me. You will never go back to the Skandinavia?
I--am glad. What will you do?"

"That's why I've come to you now."

The tension had eased. Nancy's distress gave way before the man's strong
words of comfort. She, too, drank her tea. Then she went on.

"You know, Father--"

The man stirred in his chair. It was a movement of sudden restlessness
as if that appellation on her lips disturbed him.

"--I want to--I want to--Oh, how can I tell you? You are doing the thing
I want to help in. All my life I felt the time would come when I must
devote myself to the service and welfare of others. I think it's bred in
me. My father, my real fat