es. The old woman came back to him later, and found him
in his sleep of exhaustion. Like a mother, she pillowed his head,
covered him with his clothes, and her own shawl, and made sure that his
rest would be safe and comfortable. She studied the noble young head,
and smoothed it tenderly. The pitiful face, a terrible face for those
who could read, so bitterly had grief written age on the curved dimpled
surface of youth, stirred some convulsion in her, for she threw up her
arms in despair as she walked away homeward, and wild sobs choked her
for minutes.

He sat on the kitchen porch of her poor home that afternoon, quite free
from pain. A wonderful relief had come to him. He seemed lifted into an
upper region of peace like one just returned from infernal levels. The
golden air tasted like old wine. The scenes about him were marvelous to
his eyes. His own personality redeemed from recent horror became a
delightful thing.

"It is terrible to suffer," he said to Martha Willis. "In the last five
days I have suffered."

"As all men must suffer," said the woman resignedly.

"Then you have suffered too? How did you ever get over it, mother?"

She did not tell him, after a look at his face, that some sorrows are
indelible.

"We have to get over everything, son. And it is lucky we can do it,
without running into an insane asylum."

"Were your troubles very great, mother?"

"Lots of people about say I deserved them, so they couldn't be very
great," she answered, and he laughed at her queer way of putting it,
then checked himself.

"Sorrow is sorrow to him who suffers," he said, "no matter what people
say about it. And I would not wish a beast to endure what I did. I would
help the poor devil who suffered, no matter how much he deserved his
pain."

"Only those who suffered feel that way. I am alone now, but this house
was crowded thirty years ago. There was Lucy, and John, and Oliver, and
Henry, and my husband, and we were very happy."

"And they are all gone?"

"I shall never see them again here. Lucy died when I needed her most,
and Henry, such a fine boy, followed her before he was twenty. They are
safe in the churchyard, and that makes me happy, for they are mine
still, they will always be mine. John was like his father, and both were
drunkards. They beat me in turn, and I was glad when they took to
tramping. They're tramping yet, as I hear, but I haven't seen them in
years. And Oliver, the cleverest boy in the