What was this strange figure? Who was he? As she stared, the outline drew nearer. A man vested in long white draperies confronted her. He was bareheaded and appeared insensible to the cold in which she shivered. She put out her hand and something folded it back upon her breast. She opened her lips and something sealed them.
As she watched, the figure slowly moved. It bent forward and went slowly down on its knees on the sidewalk. The white hand began to trace strange, mysterious, unknown, incomprehensible characters upon the pavement. She watched with bated breath, some memory of another sinful woman of whom she had heard in childhood coming back to her prostrate mind. Yes, and there behind the figure stood others, hateful and hating, very violent, passionate men. She stared from the handwriting in the dust to these others and they faded away. She was alone with the kneeling figure and, as she looked, it too vanished in the chill air.
She bent over the pavement. There was nothing there, yet she had received a message. After a last glance she turned away, new courage, new life, new hope in her heart.
She mounted the steps, she laid her hand upon the knob of the church door, she turned it and went bravely within.
VI
The Burden Bearer
"HE, BEARING HIS CROSS, WENT FORTH"
The sound of the running feet of the man smashing through the burned stubble ceased abruptly. He stopped at the threshold of the door. No friendly bark of dog welcomed him. From the barn there came no gentle lowing of cattle, no homely clucking of chickens. Like the house the byre too had been ruined, gutted with flame.
The soldier whose march had brought him back to his own village that night stood in the entrance of what had been his home and stared at the smoking walls, the charred roof gaping to the sky, the empty casements. The enemy had been there. He whispered his young wife's name, he called softly to the baby, as if they might be sleeping somewhere within the devastated house. He listened for a reply but none came. Perhaps he would have been thankful even for a groan or a cry of agony, anything that meant life. But all was silence within, without.