The smile left Joe's face, but not his eyes. "It be," he agreed, emphatically, and began very vigorously to rattle the stove.
Within the darkened room Grace lay; and although the little place was decked with its gayest of quilt and curtain, although Grace's face shone with a radiance as of heaven itself, Rosamund saw only the wee brown head in the hollow of her arm.
She went slowly forward, awed in the presence of the newly awakened soul in such a tiny form. Grace smiled up at her.
"Joe says he's that glad he favors me!" she whispered, and nestled her cheek against the downy head.
Such simple words, and so momentous an event! Just humble pride that the father of her child rejoiced in his son's likeness to his mother! A cheek against a baby's forehead, an old agony forgotten! The master-marvel of all creation sleeping upon the breast so lately wrung in torture! Such innocence, such purity, blessing and cleansing the house of all sin and sorrow, of shame and bitterness! God's breath in the new life, His ever recurring purpose of Love redeeming!
Rosamund could find no fitting words before the miracle. The joyous words of an ancient song echoed in her heart, "Mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation!"
But she was far from ready for her own Nunc Dimittis. The future drew her, life was welcoming her to its fulfillment. She kissed the pale, smiling mother, went swiftly from the room, past the two men whom she saw through a blur of tears, and out to the road where spring was waiting.
There, presently, Ogilvie joined her. Her look deeply stirred him. Her eyes were darker than he had ever seen them, darker than he thought they could be—or was it, he wondered, that he lost the sense of their color in sounding the promise that welled up from their depths? The promise he read there was a reflection of the revelation of those moments in Grace's room. So might Mary's eyes have looked when she bowed before the angel. For a moment they looked silently at each other; then, with a little sobbing indrawn breath, she withdrew her gaze and he took his place beside her.
He urged White Rosy's reluctant feet toward a rough wood-road that led up the mountain. For a while neither spoke. The air was full of little fitful pauses and quickly blown breaths of fragrance. A white petal fluttered from somewhere and caught, trembling, in her hair. A bee passed so near their faces, in his eager quest for sweetness, that they drew quickly back. Against the blue of the sky a hawk circled slowly, with no visible motion of pinion, seeking in vain in the unfolding life of earth for something dead to feast upon. The woods were hushed, and from their moist recesses faint vapors rose, wraithlike spirits of departing winter, and melted off in the warm sweetness of the air.
After a while they came to an open space, the scar of some old fire, from which they could look across the great plain below, back toward the Summit and the blackened spot that had been Rosamund's cherished home a few weeks before, and down upon the roof of the little house that sheltered Grace and her baby. White Rosy stopped, looked down at the faint green of the fields and whinnied; then she took up her roadside feasting. "See that bluebird," Ogilvie presently said, pointing. "See the blue flash of his wing! See—ah, there's his mate!"