facing as she must what lay
before them. "Oh, Jacques! Are you beginning to believe--to believe--?"

He interrupted her sadly. "I can believe only what I can understand. You
must forgive me, my Kate. Only, sometimes there are dreams a man has,
echoes perhaps out of his childhood--" he broke off with a shrug, "And
one is envious when one sees a faith such as Philip's in his God, so
strong, so sure.--Like his little-boy faith that his father was the best
and greatest of men, all-wise, infallible."

Kate said, with her hand on his, "Sometimes a little boy is right,
dear."

* * * * *

There have been great changes on Misty Ridge since Kate went to live in
the mountains. The work Dr. Benoix started alone has grown beyond
belief, and the influence of it extends now far beyond his immediate
locality.

He has many other assistants than his wife, though none more able--a
young oculist who specializes in trachoma, and makes no complaint of
lack of practice; two trained teachers to help in the classrooms; even a
clergyman fresh from his seminary to take the place left vacant by
Philip, greatly to the satisfaction of Bates the peddler, and somewhat
to the satisfaction of Dr. Benoix himself.

As he once explained to the visiting Bishop: "I will undertake to treat
as best I can any ill of the human body or the human mind; but when it
comes to the human soul--that calls for a bolder man than I am!"

The State is beginning to take notice of Misty Ridge, and offers of
assistance come more rapidly than Kate can decline them. She does
decline them; for the work there is Jacques Benoix' work, and she guards
it for him jealously, to be his monument in the eyes of men when the
great spirit that created it shall have passed into some other sphere of
usefulness.

She herself, for all her share in the life of Jacques' people, their
birth, their death, and the hard interval between, is nothing more to
the dwellers on Misty Ridge than "Mrs. Teacher"--sometimes "Ole Mrs.
Teacher," now that the glow of her hair is touched with gray, and
beautiful lines are growing about her beautiful eyes.

But it is a name she loves above all other names--"Ole Mrs. Teacher."
She wears it far more proudly than she ever wore her former title of
"the Madam."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KILDARES OF STORM***

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