“Sometimes,” answered the girl, gently, “I think that right must come from trying to do wrong, to make up for the countless times wrong comes from trying to do right.  Father could not have had greater joy, even in heaven, than you and I gave him at the last, neither of us meaning to do it.”

[Sidenote:  Human Sympathy and Love]

The stern barrier that had reared itself between Miriam and her kind suddenly crumbled and fell.  Warm tides of human sympathy and love came into her numb heart and ice-bound soul.  The lines in her face relaxed, her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist of tears.  Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed of saying for more than a quarter of a century: 

“Will you—­can you—­forgive me?”

All that she needed from the dead and all they could have given her came generously from Barbara.  She sprang to her feet and threw her arms around Miriam’s neck.  “Oh, Aunty!  Aunty!” she cried, “indeed I do, not only for myself, but for father and mother, too.  We don’t forgive enough, we don’t love enough, we’re not kind enough, and that’s all that’s wrong with the world.  There isn’t time enough for bitterness—­the end comes too soon.”

[Sidenote:  At Peace]

Miriam went upstairs, strangely uplifted, strangely at peace.  She was no longer alien and apart, but one with the world.  She had a sense of universal kinship—­almost of brotherhood.  That night she slept, for the first time in more than twenty years, without the fear of Constance.

And Constance, who was more sinned against than sinning, and whose faithful old husband had that day lain down, in joy and triumph, to rest beside her in the churchyard, came no more.

XXI

The Perils of the City

“Roger,” remarked Miss Mattie, laying aside her paper, “I don’t know as I’m in favour of havin’ you go to the city.  Can’t you get the Judge another dog?”

“Why not, Mother?” asked Roger, ignoring her question.

“Because it seems to me, from all I’ve been readin’ and hearin’ lately, that the city ain’t a proper place for a young person.  Take that minister, now, that those folks brought down for Ambrose North’s funeral.  I never heard anything like it in all my life.  You was there and you heard what he said, so there ain’t no need of dwellin’ on it, but it wasn’t what I’m accustomed to in the way of funerals.”  Miss Mattie’s militant hairpins bristled as she spoke.

“I thought it was all right, Mother.  What was wrong with it?”

[Sidenote:  Everything Wrong]

“Wrong!” repeated Miss Mattie, in astonishment.  “Everything was wrong with it!  Ambrose North wasn’t a church-member and he never went more’n once or twice that I know of, even after the Lord chastened him with blindness for not goin’.  There was no power to the sermon and no cryin’ except Barbara and that Miss Wynne that sang that outlandish piece instead of a hymn.