"Come here, lamb!"
And Margaret fell, weeping, into them.
That night she went down into the valley of the shadow of death, and the black woman was her rod and staff.
CHAPTER VII
TRIED AS BY FIRE
It was long months before Margaret De Jarnette looked into her husband's face. Before that time Washington's squares and circles and triangles—those blessed breathing spots—had blossomed out from hyacinths to flaunting salvias,—a stately, gorgeous, lengthening procession proclaiming to those who understand the language or who care to hear, "He hath made all things beautiful in its time."
Gradually the soft spring air had yielded to the power that always wins, and a blistering heat had fallen on the city, the fierce rays beating down upon the asphalt streets which threw them back defiantly until the very air palpitated with the conflict. Then even the asphalt gave it up, and lay a sodden mass—no longer master of its fate, but meekly yielding to the impress of every grinding heel. The leaves hung motionless, the air was dead, and one remembered, apprehensively, that some day the earth would melt with fervent heat, and wondered, gasping, if that time were now.
Then having proved his power, old Sol relaxed his grasp, and turned away his face, and men began to hope again, and to remind one another, as the breeze sprang up, of the promise given with the bow that "While the earth remaineth ... cold and heat, and summer and winter ... shall not cease." Then autumn flung her gorgeous banners to the breeze, and the Indians kindled their campfires in the West, and shouting children ploughed the streets where
"The yellow poplar leaves came down