He slept that night in one of the rare groves of old pines. He made a couch of the brown needles and threw a rug over them. The air was soft and heavy with resinous perfume. As he lay there in the stillness, the pines stretched above him like the arches of some great cathedral. His text came to him, "Come thou south wind and blow upon my garden." It was a simple people to whom he would talk on the morrow, but these things they could understand—the winds of heaven, and the stars, and the little foxes that could spoil the grapes.
When he woke there was a mocking-bird singing. He had gone to sleep obsessed by his sermon, uplifted. He woke with a sense of loneliness—a great longing for human help and understanding—a longing to look once more into Mary Ballard's clear eyes and to draw strength from the source which had once inspired him.
John Ballard's Bible lay on the rug beside him. He opened it, and the leaves fell apart at a page where a rose had once been pressed. The rose was dead now, and had been laid away carefully, lest it should be lost. But the impress was still there, as the memory of Mary's frank friendliness was still in his mind.
It was a long time before he closed the book. But at last he sighed and rose from his couch. It was inevitable, this drifting apart. Fate would hold for Mary some brilliant future. As for him, he must go on with his work alone.
Yet he realized, even in that moment of renunciation, that it was a wonderful thing that he could at last go on alone. A year ago he had needed all of Mary's strength to spur him to the effort, all of her belief in him. Now with his heart still crying out for her, needing her, he could still go on alone!
He drew a long breath, and looked up through the singing tree-tops to the bit of sky above. He stood there for a long time, silent, looking up into the shining sky.
At ten o'clock when he entered the circle of young pines, his congregation was ready for him, sitting on the rough seats which the men had fashioned, their eager faces welcoming him, their eyes lighted.
The children whom he had taught led in the singing of the simple old hymns, and Roger read a prayer.
Then he talked. He withheld nothing of the poetry of his subject; and they rose to his eloquence. And when light began to fill a man's eyes or tears to fill a woman's—Roger knew that the work of the soul was well begun.
Afterward he went among them, becoming one of them in friendliness and sympathy, but set apart and consecrated by the wisdom which made him their leader.