d:

"Grant--what is death?" The youth at his task answered by telling about
the buried seed and the quickening plant. The child listened and shook
his head.

"Father," he asked, addressing the old man, who was rubbing his chilled
hands over the fire, "what is death?" The old man spoke, slowly. He ran
his fingers through his beard and then addressing the youth who had
spoken rather than the child, replied:

"Death? Death?" and looked puzzled, as if searching for his words.
"Death is the low archway in the journey of life, where we all--high and
low, weak and strong, poor and rich, must bow into the dust, remove our
earthly trappings, wealth and power and pleasure, before we rise to go
upon the next stage of our journey into wider vistas and greener
fields."

The child nodded his head as one who has just appraised and approved a
universe, replying sagely, "Oh," then after a moment he added: "Yes."
And said no more.

But when the sun was up, and the wheels scraped on the gravel walk
before the Adams home, and the silvery, infectious laugh of a young
mother waked the echoes of the home, as she bundled up Kenyon for his
daily journey, the old man and the young man heard the child ask: "Aunty
Laura--what is death?" The woman with her own child near in the very
midst of life, only laughed and laughed again, and Kenyon laughed and
Lila laughed and they all laughed.

CHAPTER XVI

GRANT ADAMS IS SOLD INTO BONDAGE AND MARGARET FENN RECEIVES A SHOCK

Perhaps the sound of their laughter drowned the mournful voices of the
bells in Grant Adams's heart. But the bells of the New Year left within
him some stirring of their eternal question. For as the light of day
sniffed out, Grant in a cage full of miners, with Dick Bowman and one of
his boys standing beside him, going down to the second level of the
mine, asked himself the question that had puzzled him: Why did not these
men get as much out of life as their fellows on the same pay in the town
who work in stores and offices? He could see no particular difference in
the intelligence of the men in Harvey and the workers in South Harvey;
yet there they were in poorer clothes, with, faces not so quick, clearly
not so well kept from a purely animal standpoint, and even if they were
sturdier and physically more powerful, yet to the young man working with
them in the mine, it seemed that they were a different sort from the
white-handed, keen-faced, smooth-shaven, well-groome