the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even
the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker
is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often
have you and I stood here at the anvil, the fire heating the iron, and
our hammers falling constantly! Oh, Francis, I knew that only here with
God and His dumb creatures, and His wonderful healing world, all sun,
and wind, and flowers, and blossoming trees, working as you used to
work, as the first of men worked, would the sane wandering soul return
to you. The thought was in you, too, for you led me here, and have been
patient also in the awful exile of your mind."

"I have been as a child, and not as a man," he said gravely. "Shall I
ever again be a man, as I once was, Samantha?"

"You cannot see yourself," she said. "A week ago you fell ill, and since
then you have been pale and worn; but your body has been, and is, that
of a great strong man. In the morning I will take you to a spring in the
hills, and you shall see yourself, beloved."

He stood up, stretched himself, went to the door, and looked out into
the valley flooded with moonlight. He drew in a great draught of air,
and said: "The world--the great, wonderful world, where men live, and
love work, and do strong things!"--he paused, and turned with a trouble
in his face. "My wife," he said, "you have lived with a dead man twelve
years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought
once--an invention--but now--" he hung his head bitterly. She came to
him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested
there; and she said, with a glad smile: "Francis, you have lost nothing.
The thing--the invention--was all but finished when you fell ill a week
ago. We have worked at it for these twelve years; through it, I think,
you have been brought back to me. Come, there is a little work yet to,
do upon it;" and she drew him to where a machine of iron lay in the
corner. With a great cry he fell upon his knees beside it, and fondled
it.

Then, presently, he rose, and caught his wife to his breast.

Together, a moment later, they stood beside the anvil. The wolf-dog fled
out into the night from the shower of sparks, as, in the red light, the
two sang to the clanging of the hammers:

"When God was making the world
(Swift is the wind and white is the fire)"

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Counsel of the overwise to