sm hurting spiritual aspirations."

"Would he annihilate me?"

"No, he wouldn't want to annihilate you, if he thought you were trying to
find out about things. He'd guide you."

"Oh--so he's a guide, is he? Is he a spiritual or an economic guide?"
she laughed.

"I think he might combine them," he replied, laughing too.

"He must be remarkable," said Kate.

"He is remarkable, Miss Jones," gravely replied the admirer of the man
who mended the boats. "I wish you could have heard him talking to a crowd
of men last Sunday."

"Dear me--is he a public speaker?"

"Yes--in a way. And he writes things."

Katie wanted to ask what things, but they were cut short by the entrance
of Captain Prescott. It was curious how his entrance did cut them short.
She smiled to herself, wondering what he would have thought of the
conversation.

He followed her to the door and inquired for Miss Forrest. His manner was
constrained, but his eyes were begging for an explanation. He looked
unhappy, and Katie hurried away from him. It seemed she could not bear to
have any more unhappiness come pressing against her, even the
unhappiness she was confident would pass away.

In her mood of that day it seemed to Katie that the affairs of the world
were too involved for any one to have a solution for them. Life surged in
too fiercely--too uncontrollably--to be contained within a formula.

As she continued her walk, winding in and out of the wooded paths, awe
spread its great wings about her at thought of the complexity and the
fathomlessness of the relationships of life. She had but a little peep
into them, but that peep held the suggestion of limitlessness.

Because a lonely girl in a barren little town in Indiana had dreamed
dreams which life would not deliver to her, life now was beating in upon
Katie Jones. Because Ann had been foiled in her quest for happiness,
sobering shadows were falling across the sunny path along which Katie had
tripped. Did life thwarted in one place take it out in another? Because
Ann could not find joy was it to be that Katie could not have peace? Had
Ann's yearning for love been the breath blowing to flame Katie's yearning
for understanding? Because Ann could not dream her way to realities did
it mean that Katie must fight her way to them?

They were such big things--such resistless things--these wild new things
which were sweeping in upon her. With the emotion of the world surging in
and out like that how coul