“It was true, then?” she said slowly, as if still unready to believe. “We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war––the ones that did come home––and told about the white horse and the priest riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when they’re fighting and dying.”
Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by the hand.
The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to the fire.
“I must go now, child,” he said. “To-morrow I must be in French Village. Monday I will be here again.
“Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?”
The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop’s face, then nodded her head.
“Then, we must think and pray, child, that we 24 may know how to do what he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he wanted.
“God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for you. I have to go now.”
He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.
Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping in the snow.