Hannah hesitated, but Ralph pressed the question with eagerness.
“I saw you cross that bluegrass pasture the night—the night that you walked home with me.” She would have said the night of the robbery, but her heart smote her, and she adopted the more kindly form of the sentence.
Ralph would have explained, but how?
“I did cross the pasture,” he began, “but—”
Just here it occurred to Ralph that there was no reason for his night excursion across the pasture. Hannah again took up her bucket, but he said:
“Tell me what else you have against me.”
“I haven’t anything against you. Only I am poor and friendless, and you oughtn’t to make my life any heavier. They say that you have paid attention to a great many girls. I don’t know why you should want to trifle with me.”
Ralph answered her this time. He spoke low. He spoke as though he were speaking to God. “If any man says that I ever trifled with any woman, he lies. I have never loved but one, and you know who that is. And God knows.”
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Hartsook.” Hannah’s voice was broken. These solemn words of love were like a river in the desert, and she was like a wanderer dying of thirst. “I don’t know, Mr. Hartsook. If I was alone, it wouldn’t matter. But I’ve got my blind mother and my poor Shocky to look after. And I don’t want to make mistakes. And the world is so full of lies I don’t know what to believe. Somehow I can’t help believing what you say. You seem to speak so true. But—”
“But what?” said Ralph.
“But you know how I saw you just as kind to Martha Hawkins on Sunday as—as—”
“Han‑ner!” It was the melodious voice of the angry Mrs. Means, and Hannah lifted her pail and disappeared.
Standing in the shadow of his own despair, Ralph felt how dark a night could be when it had no promise of morning.
And Dr. Small, who had been stabling his horse just inside the barn, came out and moved quietly into the house just as though he had not listened intently to every word of the conversation.
As Ralph walked away he tried to comfort himself by calling to his aid the bulldog in his character. But somehow it did not do him any good. For what is a bulldog but a stoic philosopher? Stoicism has its value, but Ralph had come to a place where stoicism was of no account. The memory of the Helper, of his sorrow, his brave and victorious endurance, came when stoicism failed. Happiness might go out of life, but in the light of Christ’s life happiness seemed but a small element anyhow. The love of woman might be denied him, but there still remained what was infinitely more precious and holy, the love of God. There still remained the possibility of heroic living. Working, suffering, and enduring still remained. And he who can work for God and endure for God, surely has yet the best of life left. And, like the knights who could find the Holy Grail only in losing themselves, Hartsook, in throwing his happiness out of the count, found the purest happiness, a sense of the victory of the soul over the tribulations of life. The man who knows this victory scarcely needs the encouragement of the hope of future happiness. There is a real heaven in bravely lifting the load of one’s own sorrow and work.
And it was a good thing for Ralph that the danger hanging over Shocky made immediate action necessary.
XX
God Remembers Shocky
At four o’clock the next morning, in the midst of a driving snow, Ralph went timidly up the lane toward the homely castle of the Meanses. He went timidly, for he was afraid of Bull. But he found Bud waiting for him, with the roan colt bridled and saddled. The roan colt was really a large three-year-old, full of the finest sort of animal life, and having, as Bud declared, “a mighty sight of hoss sense fer his age.” He seemed to understand at once that there was something extraordinary on hand when he was brought out of his comfortable quarters at four in the morning in the midst of a snowstorm. Bud was sure that the roan colt felt his responsibility.
In the days that followed, Ralph often had occasion to remember this interview with Bud, who had risked much in bringing his fractured arm out into the cold, damp air. Jonathan never clave to David more earnestly than did Bud this December morning to Ralph.
“You see, Mr. Hartsook,” said Bud, “I wish I was well myself. It’s hard to set still. But it’s a-doing me a heap of good. I’m like a boy at school. And I’m a-findin’ out that doing one’s best licks fer others ain’t all they is of it, though it’s a good part. I feel like as if I must git Him, you know, to do lots for me. They’s always some sums too hard fer a feller, and he has to ax the master to do ’em, you know. But see, the roan’s a-stomping round. He wants to be off. Do you know I think that hoss knows something’s up? I think he puts in his best licks fer me a good deal better than I do fer Him.”
Ralph pressed Bud’s right hand. Bud rubbed his face against the colt’s nose and said: “Put in your best licks, old fellow.” And the colt whinnied. How a horse must want to speak! For Bud was right. Men are gods to horses, and they serve their deities with a faithfulness that shames us.
Then Ralph sprang into the saddle, and the roan, as if wishing to show Bud his willingness, broke into a swinging gallop, and was soon lost to the sight of his master in the
