ooking out over the lake, a pool of fire
in the setting sun, "if that's why Jesus died. He didn't want to, I
think. He loved the quiet things of the world, little children and
talking to friends, and doing things with his hands. I wonder if he had
to die, when his teaching was finished, so that those others he loved
might not get to depend on him too much? We're so fond of getting
propped. I don't think people ought to have a Good Shepherd. Unless they
only want to be silly sheep all their lives. And here I've been Good
Shepherding Louis all this time till now he can't get along without my
crook round his arm."

It was many years since she had consciously prayed, but now she thought
of her father's prayers, and whispered:

"God--You know all about this muddle of mine. You gave Louis to me so
that, in the end, he might be a path for You to walk along. I've tried
to be a path for You towards him, but I thought I'd better help You
along. I couldn't keep quiet. Oh how silly of me! God, I see now that
I've been all wrong. I've been keeping him out of the world when I
ought, all the time, to have been making him brave enough to face the
evil in the world. Please God, let me be quiet now--and not keep
tripping You up with my own ideas, my own strength when You walk along
my life."

Her quick imagination, the imagination of a savage or a child, saw
pictures where other people would have seen ethical ideas. She went on,
softly:

"Walk over me with burning Feet. Oh don't worry, please, about how much
it hurts, so long as You get to him in the end. Because I love him--and
because he is the one You gave to me--the man I needed."

She stood up slowly, and felt that, at last, she had given in. The poor
baby lay blissfullly asleep beside her on the ground. She took him in
her arms and carried him home Then she sat down with pen and ink and
wrote a letter. She was not sure when it would be posted, but she
decided to get it written, at any rate. She felt fey--she felt that she
was being led, now that she had asked to be kept quiet at last.

She wrote:

"'CASTLE LASHCAIRN'
(It isn't really a castle. It's a hut).

"DEAR PROFESSOR KRAILL,

"Ever since I was fifteen you have been the very heart of my imagination.
I used to read your lectures to my father, and because I've never been
to school I had to get a dictionary to two words on every line. You
enlightened me, and depressed me, and shocked me and annoyed me all at
once in