“Guess I’m gettin’ right back to the city,” he said. “And,” he added, authoritatively, “I guess all you’se folks had best git busy that way, too.” Then he turned sharply and walked over to his buckboard. “Smallbones,” he said, as he mounted to his seat, “you’ll come right along in with me––an’ bring that rope.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
GOLD
The gray of dawn had passed. Now the rosy light of day was spreading its fresh beauty across the heavens, and gladdening the warming air, and painting afresh with generous brush the rolling, open world below.
Yes, the drab of dawn was past, and, as it was with all Nature about them, the rosy light of hope brushed lightly the weary hearts of those who had just passed through the fiery trials of the furnace of despair.
There were three people only standing beneath the tree, under whose shadow a man’s life so recently was to have been offered a sacrifice to human justice––two men and a woman. There was something else there, but life had passed from it, and it lay there waiting, in the calm patience of the last, long sleep, to return to the clay from which it sprang.
Eve was kneeling beside the deformed body of her poor brother. Her tears were falling fast as she bent over the pale upturned face, even more beautiful still since Death had hugged him to its harsh bosom. All the woman’s passionate love and regrets were pouring out over the unconscious clay. His cruelties, his weaknesses were forgotten, brushed away by an infinite love that had no power nor inclination to judge.
She loved him, and he was dead. He was gone beyond her ken; and for the moment in her grief she longed to 402 be with him. In the midst of her tears she prayed––prayed for the poor weak soul, winging its way in the mysterious Beyond. She asked Him that his sins might be forgiven. She prayed Him that the great loving forbearance, so readily yielded to suffering humanity, might be shed upon that weak, benighted soul. She poured out all the longings of her simple woman’s heart in a passionate prayer that the Great Christ, who had shed His blood for all sinners, would stretch out His saving hand, and take her brother’s erring spirit once again to His bosom.