VI
And, on the very last page of The Light in the Clearing, we have an even more striking presentment of the same profound truth. For I said that, in the book, there is yet one other grave. It is a lonely grave up among the hills--the grave of the stranger who was shot by Amos Grimshaw that dark night; and this time it is old Kate who sits weeping beside it. For who was the stranger murdered upon the highway? It turns out to have been Kate's own son!
'It is very sorrowful,' she moans. 'He was trying to find me when he died!'
And so the murderer and the murdered were step-brothers! They were both the sons of Benjamin Grimshaw!
And, in this grave up among the hills, there lie down with poor murdered Enoch his own sins--whatever they may have been--and his father's sins--the sins that made him an outcast and a fugitive--and his mother's sins, the sins of the only being who loved him!
Yes, his mother's sins; for his mother's sins had slain him. In her hatred of Benjamin Grimshaw, she had moved Amos Grimshaw to become a murderer, and he had murdered--her own son!
'It is very sorrowful!' she moans.
It is indeed; sin is always sorrowful.