-the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh
away--blessed be--"

"Well, Kenyon," the grandmother interrupted the Doctor, stooping to put
her fingers lovingly upon his brow, "we owe everything to you; it was
fine and courageous of you, son!"

And with the word "son" the Doctor knew and Laura knew, and Lila first
of all knew that Bedelia Nesbit had surrendered. And Kenyon read it in
Lila's eyes. Then they all fell to telling Kenyon what a grand youth he
was and how he had saved the Doctor's life, and it ended as those things
do, most undramatically, in a chorus of what I saids, and you saids to
me, and I thought, and you did, and he should have done, until the party
wore itself out and thought of Lila, sitting by her lover, holding his
hands. And then what with a pantomime of eyes from Laura and the Doctor
to Mrs. Nesbit, and what with an empty room in a big house, with voices
far--exceedingly far--obviously far away, it ended with them as all
journeys through this weary world end, and must end if the world wags
on.

CHAPTER XLVIII

WHEREIN WE ERECT A HOUSE BUILT UPON A ROCK

That evening in the late twilight, two women stood at the wicket of a
cell in the jail and while back of the women, at the end of a corridor,
stood a curious group of reporters and idlers and guards, inside the
wicket a tall, middle-aged man with stiff, curly, reddish hair and a
homely, hard, forbidding face stood behind the bars. The young woman put
her hand with the new ring on it through the wicket.

"It's Kenyon's ring--Kenyon's," smiled Lila, and to his questioning look
at her mother, the daughter answered: "Yes, grandma knows. And what is
more, grandpa told us both--Kenyon and me--what was bothering
grandma--and it's all--all--right!"

The happy eyes of Laura Van Dorn caught the eyes of Grant as they gazed
at her from some distant landscape of his turbulent soul. She could not
hold his eyes, nor bring them to a serious consideration of the
occasion. His heart seemed to be on other things. So the woman said:
"God is good, Grant." She watched her daughter and cast a glance at the
shining ring. Grant Adams heard and saw, but while he comprehended
definitely enough, what he saw and heard seemed remote and he repeated:

"God is good--infinitely good, Laura!" His eyes lighted up. "Do you know
this is the first strike in the world--I believe, indeed the first
enterprise in the world started and conducted upon the fundamental
theory that we