new well enough, now, the way to find her path
amid the mysteries of life! She had but to follow this light!

The shining pathway led her to the summit of the hill; and as she began
to descend the other slope, it vanished with the sun. But she was not
troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was
coming was the one flowing through the farm of the Quaker. "Perhaps I
shall see him again," she said to herself, and the hope made her
tumultuously happy.

She had lost all consciousness of the flight of time, and now noticed
with surprise that it was evening. The crows were winging their way to
their nesting ground; the rabbits were seeking their burrows; the whole
animal world was faring homeward. Some universal impulse seemed to be
driving them along their predestined paths, as it drove the brooks and
the clouds, and Pepeeta appeared, as much as they, to be borne onward by
a power above herself. She was but little more conscious of choosing her
path than the doe who at a little distance was hurrying home to her
mate; so completely were all her volitional powers in abeyance to the
emotional elements of her soul.

CHAPTER IX.

WHERE PATHS CONVERGE

"If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed;
If not, 'tis true this parting was well made."
--Julius Caesar.

Violent emotions, like the lunar tides, must have their ebb because they
have their flow. The feelings do not so much advance like a river, as
oscillate like a pendulum.

Striding homeward after his downfall in the log cabin, David's
determination to join his fortunes to those of the two adventurers began
to wane. He trembled at an unknown future and hesitated before untried
paths.

Already the strange experience through which he had just passed began to
seem to him like a half-forgotten dream. The refluent thoughts and
feelings of his religious life began to set back into every bay and
estuary of his soul.

With a sense of shame, he regretted his hasty decision, and was saying
to himself, "I will arise and go to my Father," for all the experiences
of life clothed themselves at once in the familiar language of the
Scriptures.

It is more than likely that he would have carried out this resolution,
and that this whole experience would have become a mere incident in his
life history, if his destiny had depended upon his personal volition.
But how few of the great events of life are brought a