"At last!" he said, and stood rooted to the roadside gazing at the thing for which, during the last two months, he had been so desperately groping. "This one thing," he went on, "this one thing about those impenetrable months here I do remember. I believe that if I had chanced to see it on that afternoon of my recovery, if I had only chanced to come this way instead of around by the other road, it might have restored to me some memory of this place."
They stood now on the edge of the strip of pavement, where dead leaves spread a spongy carpet between the asphalt and the barbed-wire fence that bordered the opposite estate. And what they looked upon was a huge boulder, half embedded in the earth. By some mighty and persistent force it had been rent asunder, and now, up through the cleft which tore its surface with a long jagged scar, a sapling eucalyptus-tree, perfectly shaped and beautifully proportioned, had pushed its way. A zephyr or perhaps a bird had sown the seed in this rock-bound prison. And with a vitality that appeared incredible it had taken root and grown there, stretching vigorous, red-tipped leaves heavenward. In some miraculous manner its tap-root had found the sustaining soil, and its flame-colored crown the sunlight. There it stood, on the lonely road to Rest Hollow, a living torch of liberty, flaunting its heroic triumph above the shattered body of its foe.
"On the day that Glover first brought me here, I saw that tree." Kenwick's voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "I remember looking out at it from an opening in the fence. I didn't know just why I was here, but I had a sense of—I can't describe it to you—but it was a sense of imprisonment. I knew that if I wanted to get out of that place I couldn't do it, and there's no feeling on earth like that. And then I saw—this, and it thrilled me. In a curious, unexplainable way it gave me hope. I don't recall anything else about the place, and I don't remember whether I ever saw this again. But during these last two months I have been looking for something that I knew I had lost out of my life, and here it is."
Marcreta Morgan reached over and touched the sapling's damp bark with reverent fingers. From a cleft in the conquered boulder came the pungent odor of the crushed leaves that were sustaining this new life. She turned to the man beside her with shining eyes.
"The resurrection!" she cried.
He drew her close to him beneath the tender branches of the valiant little sapling.
"An imprisoned soul," he whispered, "liberated at last—by the miracle of love."