church-yard before the
service. Pearl sat inside and watched them as they talked together
excitedly. Snatches of their conversation came to her. "Well-behaved
people should stay with well-behaved people, I say"--this was from
Mrs. Switzer.

The men did not join in the conversation, but stood around, ill at
ease in their stiff collars, and made an attempt to talk about summer
fallowing and other harmless topics. Their attitude to the whole
affair was one of aloofness. Let the women settle it among themselves.

From the window where she sat Pearl could see far down the valley. The
river pursued its way, happily, unperturbed by the wrongs or sorrows
of the people who lived beside it. Sometimes it had reached out and
drowned a couple of them as it had done last year--but no one held it
against the river at all.

The rejuvenation of nature was to be seen everywhere, in springing
grass and leafing tree. Everything could begin life over again. Why
were the people so hard on Annie Gray, even if all they believed about
her were true? Pearl wondered about the religion of people like the
group who were so busily talking just outside the window. Did it not
teach them to be charitable? The Good Shepherd, in the picture above
the altar, had gone out to find the wandering sheep, even leaving
all the others, to bring back the lost one, sorry that it had been
wayward, not angry--but only sorry--Pearl hoped that they would look
at it when they came in. She hoped too, that they would look at the
few scattered tombstones in the churchyard, over which the birds were
darting and skimming, and be reminded of the shortness of life, and
their own need of mercy--and she hoped that some of the dead, who lay
there so peacefully now, might have been sinners who redeemed the past
and died respected, and that they might plead now with these just
persons who needed no repentance.

But when the service was over, and a brief sermon on Amos and his good
deeds, the congregation separated, and Pearl went back to the brown
house with a heavy heart, and the cry of her soul was that God would
show her a way of making the people understand. "Plough a fire-guard,
O Lord," she prayed, as she walked, "and let these deadly fires of
gossip run their noses square into it and be smothered. Use me if you
can--I am here--ready to help--but the big thing is to get it done."

Around the open grate-fire that night, after James had gone to bed,
Pearl and Mrs. Gray s