ere we've sat, I can measure the progress. That's what I wanted
to say to you and Mr. Ransom--because I'm going fast. Hold on to me,
that's right; but you can't keep me. I don't want to stay now; I presume
I shall join some of the others that we lost long ago. Their faces come
back to me now, quite fresh. It seems as if they might be waiting; as if
they were all there; as if they wanted to hear. You mustn't think
there's no progress because you don't see it all right off; that's what
I wanted to say. It isn't till you have gone a long way that you can
feel what's been done. That's what I see when I look back from here; I
see that the community wasn't half waked up when I was young."

"It is you that have waked it up more than any one else, and it's for
that we honour you, Miss Birdseye!" Verena cried, with a sudden violence
of emotion. "If you were to live for a thousand years, you would think
only of others--you would think only of helping on humanity. You are our
heroine, you are our saint, and there has never been any one like you!"
Verena had no glance for Ransom now, and there was neither deprecation
nor entreaty in her face. A wave of contrition, of shame, had swept over
her--a quick desire to atone for her secret swerving by a renewed
recognition of the nobleness of such a life as Miss Birdseye's.

"Oh, I haven't effected very much; I have only cared and hoped. You will
do more than I have ever done--you and Olive Chancellor, because you are
young and bright, brighter than I ever was; and besides, everything has
got started."

"Well, you've got started, Miss Birdseye," Doctor Prance remarked, with
raised eyebrows, protesting dryly but kindly, and putting forward, with
an air as if, after all, it didn't matter much, an authority that had
been superseded. The manner in which this competent little woman
indulged her patient showed sufficiently that the good lady was sinking
fast.

"We will think of you always, and your name will be sacred to us, and
that will teach us singleness and devotion," Verena went on, in the same
tone, still not meeting Ransom's eyes again, and speaking as if she were
trying now to stop herself, to tie herself by a vow.

"Well, it's the thing you and Olive have given your lives to that has
absorbed me most, of late years. I did want to see justice done--to us.
I haven't seen it, but you will. And Olive will. Where is she--why isn't
she near me, to bid me farewell? And Mr. Ransom will--an