"I suppose doubts are sent to try our faith; but we have the promise that they will be removed if we ask in the right spirit. Are you sure you have asked in the right spirit, Lloyd?"
"I have prayed for light, but I haven't asked to have my doubts removed, Marg'et Ann; I don't know that I want to believe what doesn't appear reasonable to me."
The girl lifted a troubled, tremulous face to his.
"That isn't the right spirit, Lloyd,—you know it isn't. How can God remove your doubts if you don't want him to?"
The young man reached up and broke off a twig of the round, pink crab-apple buds and rolled the stem between his work-hardened hands.
"I've asked for light," he repeated, "and if when it comes I see things different, I'll say so; but I can't want to believe what I don't believe, and I can't pray for what I don't want."
The triangle of Marg'et Ann's brow between her burnished satin puffs of hair took on two upright, troubled lines. She unfolded her handkerchief nervously, and her token fell with a ringing sound against tired Hephzibah's gravestone and rolled down above her patiently folded hands.
Lloyd stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he found it he gave it to her silently, and their hands met. Poor Marg'et Ann! No hunted Covenanter amid Scottish heather was more a martyr to his faith than this rose-cheeked girl amid Iowa cornfields. She took the bit of flattened lead and pressed it between her burning palms.
"I hope you won't get hardened in unbelief, Lloyd," she said soberly.
The congregation was drifting toward the church again, and the young people turned. Lloyd touched the iridescent silk of her wide sleeve.