Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at him through the starting tears.
Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain upon him all these weary hours?
He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God’s air about him. For it was God’s air. That was the wonder of it. The world was God’s! And it was new made for him to live in!
He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He had been bound: he was free!
Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.
With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal God in very deed.)
Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.
What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved. They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just what was their opinion of the whole matter.