when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?

Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it--and there is
profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a far
land, then--if they be at peace with God--they turn their longing eyes
toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that
curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, clothed
in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping away to
the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet
the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and
passes--but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.

Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared
twice--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it.
Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one
gets most things at second hand in this world.

Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbo