“My boy,” said the Bishop queerly, “yesterday I asked a man, on his soul, for the truth––the truth. I got no answer.
“But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of all the World, once asked what was truth. And he got no answer. Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things bigger than we are. We get no answer.”
Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.
X
THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID
It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of Promise.
The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the enemy was gone.
But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature. For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent, 312 and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The world was born again!