: and the mill with the wheels drowsily turning and
no one there at all save one boy with fluttering heart, tiptoeing in the
sunlit doorway.

And the voice of the bird. Not the song but the _voice_. Yes, a bird had
a voice. I had known it always, and yet somehow I had not dared to say
it. I felt that they would look at me with that questioning,
incredulous look which I dreaded beyond belief. They might laugh! But
here it was in the Book--the voice of a bird. How my appreciation of
that Book increased and what a new confidence it gave me in my own
images! I went about for days, listening, listening, listening--and
interpreting.

So the words of the preacher and the fire in them:

"And when they shall be afraid of that which is
high and fears shall be in the way----"

I knew the fear of that which is high: I had dreamed of it commonly. And
I knew also the Fear that stood in the way: him I had seen in a myriad
of forms, looming black by darkness in every lane I trod; and yet with
what defiance I met and slew him!

And then, more thrilling than all else, the words of the preacher:

"Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,
or the wheel broken at the cistern."

Such pictures: that silver cord, that golden bowl! And why and
wherefore?

A thousand ways I turned them in my mind--and always with the sound of
the preacher's voice in my ears--the resonance of the words conveying an
indescribable fire of inspiration. Vaguely and yet with certainty I knew
the preacher spoke out of some unfathomable emotion which I did not
understand--which I did not care to understand. Since then I have
thought what those words must have meant to him!

Ah, that tall lank preacher, who thought himself a failure: how long I
shall remember him and the words he read and the mournful yet resonant
cadences of his voice--and the barren church, and the stony religion!
Heaven he gave me, unknowing, while he preached an ineffectual hell.

As we rode home Harriet looked into my face.

"You have enjoyed the service," she said softly.

"Yes," I said.

"It _was_ a good sermon," she said.

"Was it?" I replied.

IX

THE TRAMP

I have had a new and strange experience--droll in one way, grotesque in
another and when everything is said, tragic: at least an adventure.
Harriet looks at me accusingly, and I have had to preserve the air of
one deeply contrite now for two days (