gy,
education, growth.

And they, who listened, began to see that it was a spiritual as well as
practical thing to set their houses in order, to plant and to till and
to make the soil produce. They saw in the future a community which was
orderly and law-abiding, they saw their children brought out of the
bondage of ignorance and into the freedom of knowledge. And they saw
more than that--they saw the Vision, faintly at first, but with
ever-increasing clearness.

It was a wonderful task which Roger had set for himself, and he threw
himself into his work with flaming energy. He hired a buggy and a
little fat horse, and spent some of his nights _en route_ in the houses
of his friends along the way; other nights--and these were the ones he
liked best--he slept under the pines. With John Ballard's old Bible
under his arm, and his prayer-book in his pocket, he went forth each
week, and always he found a congregation ready and waiting.

Over the stretches of that barren country they came to hear him,
sailing in their schooner-wagons toward the harbor of the hope which he
brought to them.

When he had preached from his pulpit, he had talked to men and women of
culture and he had spent much of his time in polishing a phrase, or in
rounding out a sentence. But now he spent his time in search of the
clear words which would carry his--message.

For Mary had said that every man who preached must have a message.

Mary!

How far she had receded from him. When he thought of her now it was
with a sense of overwhelming loss. She had chosen to withdraw herself
from him. In every letter he had seen signs of it--and he could not
protest. No man in his position could say to a woman, "I will not let
you go." He had nothing to offer her but his life in the pines, a life
that could not mean much to such a woman.

But it meant much to himself. Gradually he had come to see that love
alone could never have brought to him what his work was bringing. He
had a sense of freedom such as one must have whose shackles have been
struck off. He began to know now what Mary had meant when she had
said, "I feel as if I were flying through the world on strong wings."
He, too, felt as if he were flying, and as it his wings were carrying
him up and up beyond any heights to which he had hitherto soared.

He slept that night in one of the rare groves of old pines. He made a
couch of the brown needles and threw a rug over them. The air was