of his soul, long sealed, had broken up, and as if he saw a
possibility before him for the first time through the words she had
spoken.

At last he turned to her with that wondering smile again. "Why should
you care?" he asked. The words would have sounded harsh if his tone had
not been so gentle.

Margaret hesitated for an answer. "I don't know how to tell it," she
said, slowly. "There's another verse, a few lines more in that poem,
perhaps you know them?--

'All I never could be, All, men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.'

I want it because--well, perhaps because I feel you are worth all that
to God. I would like to see you be that."

He looked down at her again, and was still so long that she felt she had
failed miserably.

"I hope you will excuse my speaking," she added. "I--It seems there are
so many grand possibilities in life, and for you--I couldn't bear to
have you say you hadn't made good, as if it were all over."

"I'm glad you spoke," he said, quickly. "I guess perhaps I have been all
kinds of a fool. You have made me feel how many kinds I have been."

"Oh no!" she protested.

"You don't know what I have been," he said, sadly, and then with sudden
conviction, as if he read her thoughts: "You _do_ know! That prig of a
parson has told you! Well, it's just as well you should know. It's
right!"

A wave of misery passed over his face and erased all its brightness and
hope. Even the gentleness was gone. He looked haggard and drawn with
hopelessness all in a moment.

"Do you think it would matter to me--_anything_ that man would say?" she
protested, all her woman's heart going out in pity.

"But it was true, all he said, probably, and more--"

"It doesn't matter," she said, eagerly. "The other is true, too. Just as
the poem says, 'All that man ignores in you, just that you are worth to
God!' And you _can_ be what He meant you to be. I have been praying all
the afternoon that He would help you to be."

"Have you?" he said, and his eyes lit up again as if the altar-fires of
hope were burning once more. "Have you? I thank you."

"You came to me when I was lost in the wilderness," she said, shyly. "I
wanted to help _you_ back--if--I might."

"You will help--you have!" he said, earnestly. "And I was far enough off
the trail, too, but if there's any way to get back I'll get there." He
grasped her hand and held it for a second. "Keep up that praying," he