“‘To Hilliard Watts, Wher-Ever Found.
“‘Come on home an’ fetch yo’ preacher. Can’t afford to lose the filly, an’ the gal has been off her feed ever since you left.
“‘JOBE GALLOWAY.’”
“Oh, Bud, I’ll never forgit that homecomin’ when she met me at the gate an’ kissed me an’ laughed a little an’ cried a heap, an’ we walked in the little parlor an’ the preacher made us one.
“Nor of that happy, happy year, when all life seemed a sweet dream now as I look back, an’ even the memory of it keeps me happy. Memory is a land that never changes in a world of changes, an’ that should show us our soul is immortal, for memory is only the reflection of our soul.”
His voice grew more tender, and low: “Toward the last of the year I seed her makin’ little things slyly an’ hidin’ ’em away in the bureau drawer, an’ one night she put away a tiny half-finished little dress with the needle stickin’ in the hem—just as she left it—just as her beautiful hands made the last stitch they ever made on earth....
“Oh, Bud, Bud, out of this blow come the sweetest thought I ever had, an’ I know from that day that this life ain’t all, that we’ll live agin as sho’ as God lives an’ is just—an’ no man can doubt that. No—no—Bud, this life ain’t all, because it’s God’s unvarying law to finish things. That tree there is finished, an’ them birds, they are finished, an’ that flower by the road-side an’ the mountain yonder an’ the world an’ the stars an’ the sun. An’ we’re mo’ than they be, Bud—even the tiniest soul, like Kathleen’s little one that jes’ opened its eyes an’ smiled an’ died, when its mammy died. It had something that the trees an’ birds an’ mountains didn’t have—a soul—an’ don’t you kno’ He’ll finish all such lives up yonder? He’ll pay it back a thousandfold for what He cuts off here.”
Bud wept because the tears were running down the old man’s cheeks. He wanted to say something, but he could not speak. That queer feeling that came over him at times and made him silent had come again.
The Bishop laughed outright as his mind went back again.
“Well,” he went on reminiscently, “I’ll have to finish my tale an’ tell you how I throwed the cold steel into Jud Carpenter when I got back. I saw I had it to do, to work back into my daddy-in-law’s graces an’ save my reputation.