ce that sounded no more than an echo.
When he who had called out heard it, he turned to the little Pilgrim with
eyes that were liquid with love and pity; 'Listen,' he said, 'there is
some one on the way.'

'Can we help them?' cried the little Pilgrim; her heart bounded forward
like a bird. She had no fear. The darkness and the horrible way seemed as
nothing to her. She stretched out her arms as if she would have seized
the traveller and dragged him up into the light.

He who was by her side shook his head, but with a smile. 'We can but
wait,' he said. 'It is forbidden that any one should help; for this is
too terrible and strange to be touched even by the hands of angels. It is
like nothing that you know.'

'I have been taught many things,' said the little Pilgrim, humbly. 'I
have been taken back to the dear earth, where I saw the judgment-seat,
and the pleaders who spoke, and the man who was the judge, and how each
is judge for himself.'

'You have seen the place of hope,' said her guide, 'where the Father is
and the Son, and where no man is left to his own ways. But there is
another country, where there is no voice either from God or from good
spirits, and where those who have refused are left to do as seems good in
their own eyes.'

'I have read,' said the little Pilgrim, with a sob, 'of one who went from
city to city and found no rest.'

Her guide bowed his head very gravely in assent. 'They go from place to
place,' he said, 'if haply they might find one in which it is possible to
live. Whether it is order or whether it is license, it is according to
their own will. They try all things, ever looking for something which the
soul may endure. And new cities are founded from time to time, and a new
endeavor ever and ever to live, only to live. For even when happiness
fails and content, and work is vanity and effort is naught, it is
something if a man can but endure to live.'

The little Pilgrim looked at him with wistful eyes, for what he said was
beyond her understanding. 'For us,' she said, 'life is nothing but joy.
Oh, brother, is there then condemnation?'

'It is no condemnation; it is what they have chosen,--it is to follow
their own way. There is no longer any one to interfere. The pleaders are
all silent; there is no voice in the heart. The Father hinders them not,
nor helps them, but leaves them.' He shivered as if with cold; and the
little Pilgrim felt that there breathed from the depths of darkness at