s feel that I
don't want Heaven without this. I never pray for anything else. Wealth,
honour, fame, I once longed for these. But now these are nothing to me
if only I knew Barney was right and safe and well. Yes, even my love for
you, Margaret, the best thing, the truest thing next to my love of my
Lord, I'd give up to know. But three years have gone since that awful
night and not a word! It eats and eats and eats into me here," he smote
himself hard over his heart, "till the actual physical pain is at times
more than I can stand. What do you think, Margaret?" he continued, his
face quivering piteously. "Every time I think of God I think of Barney.
Every prayer I make I ask for Barney. I wake at night and it is Barney I
am thinking of. Can I stand this long? Will I have to stand it long?
Has God forgiven me? And when He forgives, does He take away the pain?
Sometimes I wonder if there is anything in all this I preach!"

"Hush, Dick!" said Margaret, her voice broken with the grief she
understood only too well. "Hush! You must not doubt God. God forgives
and loves and grieves with our griefs. He will take away the pain as
soon as He can. You must believe this and wait and trust. God will give
him back to us. I feel it here." She laid her hand upon her heaving
breast.

For some moments Dick was silent. "Perhaps so," he said at length. "For
your sake He might. Yes, down in my heart I believe he will."

"Come," said Margaret, "let us go out into the open air, into God's
sunlight. We shall feel better there. Come, Dick, let us go and see the
Goat cavort." She took him by the arm and lifted him up. At the door she
met Ben. "I won't be gone long, Ben," she explained.

"Stay as long as yeh like, Miss Margaret," replied Ben graciously. "An'
the longer yeh stay the better fer the hinstitution."

"That's an extremely doubtful compliment," laughed Margaret, as they
passed down the winding path that made its way through the tall red
pines to the rocky bank of the Goat River. There on a broad ledge of
rock that jutted out over the boiling water, Margaret seated herself
with her back against the big red polished bole of a pine tree, while
at her feet Dick threw himself, reclining against a huge pine root that
threw great clinging arms here and there about the rocky ledges. It
was a sweet May day. All the scents and sounds of spring filled up
the fragrant spaces of the woods. Far up through the great feathering
branches gleamed pat