, far away, farther than
Harney, farther than the sky, the stranger's brown eyes looked
pityingly. Her sin was no longer animal. It had touched her soul.
Instead of an incident it had become a condition which hemmed her in,
from which she could not escape. Suddenly she saw the difference. She
dwelt in darkness; he, with his clear soul, dwelt in light. She threw
herself face downward on the earth, weeping and clutching the grass in
the agony of her sin.

Then a new sound smote the air. She sat upright and listened.

Around the bend she heard a high-pitched voice declaiming in measured
tones.

"'Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth
throughout all generations,'" the voice chanted.

"'The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth all that he bowed
down.'"

The speaker strode in sight. He was one of the old-fashioned itinerant
preachers occasionally seen in the Hills, filled with fanatic
enthusiasm, journeying from place to place on foot, exhorting by the
fear of hell fire rather than by the hope of heaven's bliss, half-crazy,
half-inspired, wholly in earnest. His form was gaunt. He was clad in a
shiny black coat buttoned closely, and his shoes showed dusty and huge
beneath his carefully turned-up trousers. A beaver of ancient pattern
was pushed far back from his narrow forehead, and from beneath it
flashed vividly his fierce hawk-eyes. Over his shoulder, suspended from
a cane, was a carpet-bag. He stepped eagerly forward with an immense
excess of nervous force that carried him rapidly on. Nothing more out of
place could be imagined than this comical figure against the simplicity
of the hills. Yet for that very reason he was the more grateful to the
woman's perturbed soul. She listened eagerly for his next words.

He strode fiercely across the stones of the little ford, declaiming with
energy, with triumph:

"'The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in due
season.

"'Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living
thing.

"'The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.

"'The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon
Him in truth.

"'He will fulfil the desire of all that fear Him: He also will hear their
cry and save them.'"

Anne saw but two things plainly in all the world--the clear-eyed
stranger like a god; this fiery old man who spoke words containing
strange, though vague, intimations of