"Yes."
Now Grandfather folded his arms across his breast and bent his head almost upon them. Did God hear His children, or did He not?
Levis lifted his hat from the pine table.
"Matthew, look at me!"
Matthew lifted his eyes. For an instant, with torn heart, he longed to throw himself on his father's breast. But his Heavenly Father was more dear. He dropped his eyes once more.
"You've entirely made up your mind?"
"Yes," he whispered.
Levis lingered another instant, his back against the door.
"Listen to me. I have my creed. I believe that no man can behave foolishly or wrongly without having it somehow returned to him. I hope that this hour will never be visited upon you."
Then Levis went out to return no more. He stumbled as he crossed the step and then straightened up in the face of the wind which blew clear and strong from the north. He went through the gate into the graveyard, and saw the full moon, unveiled with mysterious suddenness, illuminating the white stones. The experience through which he had passed, the stormy and magnificent night, the moonlight making so purely white the tallest stone in the little graveyard—all would have moved and racked another man. But he had the power, cultivated through long years in uncongenial surroundings, of detaching himself from the present. He began to repeat a passage of description of which he was fond and which brought before his eyes a foreign landscape which he had never seen, but of which he often dreamed. When it was finished he repeated another passage and yet another, and so came at last to his own door.