le hands shell filled went grasping
for more. I gleaned and keep. They said it was hours before, at the ebb.
Then the tide stopped us, and that was all.

'In my bitter grief I said at the first that God was just but not
merciful; since He took the dear body from me and hid it in the sea that
I, who had not wrapped it for christening, should never wrap it meetly
for the grave. Most just, most merciful! afterwards He sent you to me by
the very sea. I knew and claimed you as you lay on the shore, a living
child, among twoscore dead men, and none withstood me.

'In ignorant haste, eager to atone, I was loath to believe what the cross
at your neck told, with its three crosses inscribed, and your sole name
"Christian," and on the reverse a date. Like a rebuff to me then it was,
not realising that I was to work out an atonement more full and complete.
I have tried. O Christian, it will not be in vain!

'All these years your conscience has been in my keeping; you have freely
rendered to me account of thoughts and deeds, good and ill; you have
shared no secret, no promise apart from me. To-day you tell me that your
conduct, your conscience, you will have in your own sole charge.

'My boy, you do no wrong; this is no reproach, though I cannot but grieve
and fear. But know you must now, that in you I present to God my great
contrition; in you I dare look for His favourable grace made manifest; a
human soul seeks in you to see on earth salvation.'

Christian shrank before the passionate claim. His sense of raw, faulty
youth was a painful shame, confronted by the bared remorse of this
austere woman, whom his heart held as mother and saint. 'O God, help us,'
he said, and his eyes were full of tears.

'Ay, Christian,' she said, 'so I prayed last night.'

'Mother,' he said, awed, 'what did you know? how did you know?'

'Nothing, nothing, only great fear for you, and that sprung of a dream.
Often the wind and the waves have crept into my sleep and stolen you from
me. Last night I dreamed you lay dead, and not alone; by you lay my
little one, a small, white, naked shape crouched dead at your side. I
woke in great fear for you; it would not pass, though the night was
still; it grew rather, for it was a fear of worse than death for you.
Yes, I prayed.'

Through his brain swept a vision, moonlighted, of the fair witch's haunt,
and her nude shape dominant as she condemned him. The omniscience of God
had been faint sustenance then co