ut the hopeless sadness of it. That which had stirred
the passion in Lawson was only wringing my heart. It was almost too
pitiful to bear. As the trees crashed down and the men wiped the sweat
from their brows, I seemed to myself like the murderer of fair women
and innocent children. I remember that the tears were running over my
cheeks. More than once I opened my mouth to countermand the work, but
the face of Jobson, that grim Tishbite, held me back.

I knew now what gave the Prophets of the Lord their mastery, and I knew
also why the people sometimes stoned them.

The last tree fell, and the little tower stood like a ravished shrine,
stripped of all defence against the world. I heard Jobson's voice
speaking. "We'd better blast that stane thing now. We'll trench on
four sides and lay the dinnymite. Ye're no' looking weel, sir. Ye'd
better go and sit down on the braeface."

I went up the hillside and lay down. Below me, in the waste of shorn
trunks, men were running about, and I saw the mining begin. It all
seemed like an aimless dream in which I had no part. The voice of that
homeless goddess was still pleading. It was the innocence of it that
tortured me Even so must a merciful Inquisitor have suffered from the
plea of some fair girl with the aureole of death on her hair. I knew I
was killing rare and unrecoverable beauty. As I sat dazed and
heartsick, the whole loveliness of Nature seemed to plead for its
divinity. The sun in the heavens, the mellow lines of upland, the blue
mystery of the far plains, were all part of that soft voice. I felt
bitter scorn for myself. I was guilty of blood; nay, I was guilty of
the sin against light which knows no forgiveness. I was murdering
innocent gentleness--and there would be no peace on earth for me. Yet
I sat helpless. The power of a sterner will constrained me. And all
the while the voice was growing fainter and dying away into unutterable
sorrow.

Suddenly a great flame sprang to heaven, and a pall of smoke. I heard
men crying out, and fragments of stone fell around the ruins of the
grove. When the air cleared, the little tower had gone out of sight.

The voice had ceased and there seemed to me to be a bereaved silence in
the world. The shock moved me to my feet, and I ran down the slope to
where Jobson stood rubbing his eyes.

"That's done the job. Now we maun get up the tree roots. We've no
time to howk. We'll just blast the feck o' them."