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 ^be Xciueciet 
 
 ^! ^lllliH»3gU--i^*ii^taii^'S^^*, 
 
 ■^'^iii^mmmm^mkixi^ 
 
THE 
 
 of 
 
 COMPLETE NOVELS 
 
 in One Volume. 
 Paper, is. 6d. ; doth, 2s. 
 
 Earlg IDoIumcg. 
 By L. DouGALL. 
 
 THE 2EIT-GEIST 
 
 With Frontispiece. 
 
 By Gyp. 
 
 CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE. 
 With Portrait of Author. 
 
 By Frankfort Moore. 
 THE SALE OF A SOUL. 
 
 With Frontispiece. 
 
 By the Author of " A Yellow- 
 Aster." 
 
 A N EW NOVEL. 
 
 With Frontispiece. 
 Oiher volumes to follow. 
 
 Each volume with designed 
 Title-page. 
 
 LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., 
 Paternoster Row. 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
! 
 
 L. 
 
 
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AMILTON PIJBLIG ! IBBABX 
 
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 HAMILTON Pfp'", , ,»,aji 
 
 ^Y 
 
" I . . . create evil. I am 
 the Lord." 
 
 Isa, xlv. 6, 7. 
 
 "Where will God be 
 
 absent? In His face 
 
 Is light, but in His shadow 
 
 there is healing too : 
 Let Guido touch the shadow 
 and be healed ! " 
 
 The Rinff and the BooJt. 
 
 " If Nature is the garment 
 of God, it is woven without 
 seam throughout." 
 
 T/te Asant of Man. 
 
Oxford, January 1895. 
 
 When ravelling in Canada, in 
 the region north of Lake Ontario, 
 I came upon traces oj ,ie some- 
 what remarkable life which is the 
 subject of the following sketch. 
 
 Having applied to the school- 
 master in the town where Bar- 
 tholomew Toyner lived, I received 
 an account the graphic detail and 
 imaginative insight of which attest 
 the writer's personal affection. 
 This account, with only such con- 
 densation as is necessary, I now 
 give to the world. I do not believe 
 that it belongs to the novel to teach 
 theology; but I do believe that re- 
 ligious sentiments and opinions are 
 a legitimate subject of its art, and 
 that perhaps its highest junction 
 is to promote understanding by 
 bringing into contact minds that 
 habitually misinterpret one another. 
 
ry 1895. 
 
 nada^ in 
 Ontario, 
 ie some- 
 ■h is the 
 tch. 
 
 school- 
 •V Bar- 
 received 
 'ail and 
 :h attest 
 Section, 
 '^h con- 
 I now 
 believe 
 teach 
 hat re- 
 ms are 
 % and 
 mction 
 ^g by 
 's that 
 tother. 
 
 THE ZEIT-GEIST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 To-day I am at home in the 
 little town of the fens, where 
 the Ahwewee River falls some 
 thirty feet from one \qyq\ of 
 land to another. Both broad 
 levels were covered with forest 
 of ash and maple, spruce and 
 tamarack ; but long ago, some 
 time in the thirties, impious 
 hands built dams on the im- 
 petuous Ahwewee, and wide 
 marshes and drowned wood- 
 lands are the result. Yet just 
 immediately at Fentown there 
 is neither marsh nor dead tree ; 
 the river dashes over its ledge 
 of rock in a foaming flood, 
 runs shallow and rapid be- 
 
 I B 
 
THE 
 
 tween green woods, and all 
 about the town there are 
 breezy pastures where the 
 stumps are still standing, and 
 arable lands well cleared. The 
 little town itself has a thriving 
 look. Its public buildings and 
 its villas have risen, as by the 
 sweep of an enchanter's wand, 
 in these backwoods to the 
 south of the Ottawa valley. 
 
 There was a day when I 
 came a stranger to Fentown. 
 The occasion of my coming 
 was a meeting concerning the 
 opening of new schools for 
 the town — schools on a large 
 and ambitious plan for so 
 small a place. When the 
 meeting was over, I came out 
 into the street on a mild 
 September afternoon. The 
 other members of the School 
 Council were with me. There 
 were two clergymen of the 
 party. One of them, a young 
 man with thin, eager face, 
 happened to be at my side. 
 
 " This Mr. Toyner, whose 
 opinion has been so much con- 
 
 2 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and all 
 re are 
 re the 
 ig, and 
 I. ^ The 
 driving 
 gs and 
 by the 
 
 wand, 
 o the 
 ley. 
 hen I 
 itown. 
 oming 
 ig the 
 s for 
 
 large 
 )r so 
 the 
 e out 
 
 mild 
 
 The 
 :hool 
 "here 
 the 
 oung 
 face, 
 
 hose 
 con- 
 
 :i 
 
 suited, was not here to-day ? " 
 I said this interrogatively. 
 
 " No, ah — but you'll see 
 him now. He has invited 
 you all to a garden party, or 
 something of that sort. He's 
 in delicate health. Ah — of 
 course, you know, it is 
 natural for me to wish his 
 influence with the Council 
 were much less than it is." 
 
 " Indeed ! He was spoken 
 of as a philanthropist." 
 
 " It's a very poor love to 
 one's fellow-man that gives 
 him all that his vanity desires 
 in the way of knowledge 
 without leading him into the 
 Church, where he would be 
 taught to set the value of 
 everything in its right pro- 
 portion." 
 
 I was rather struck with 
 this view of the function of 
 the Church. " Certainly," I 
 replied, " to see all things in 
 right proportion is wisdom ; 
 but I heard this Toyner men- 
 tioned as a religious man." 
 
 " He has some imaginations 
 
 3 
 
THE 
 
 of his own, I believe, which 
 he mistakes for religion. I do 
 not know him intimately; I 
 do not wish to. I believe he 
 has some sort of desire to do 
 what is right ; but that, you 
 know, is a house built upon 
 the sand, unless it is founded 
 upon the desire for instruction 
 as to what is right. Every one 
 cries up his generosity ; for 
 instance, one of my church- 
 wardens tells him that we need 
 a new organ in the church and 
 the people won't give a penny- 
 piece towards it, so Toyner 
 says, with his benevolent smile, 
 * They must be taught to give. 
 Tell them I will give half if 
 they will give the other half.* 
 But if the Roman Catholic 
 priest or a Methodist goes to 
 him the next day for a sub- 
 scription, he gives just as will- 
 ingly if, as is likely, he thinks 
 the object good. What can 
 you do with a man like that, 
 who has no principle ? It's 
 impossible to have much re- 
 spect for him." 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Now I myself am a school- 
 master, versed in the lore of 
 certain books ancient and 
 I modern, but knowing very 
 
 *l little about such a practical 
 
 matter as applied theology; 
 nor did I know very much 
 then concerning the classifica- 
 tion of Christians among them- 
 selves : but I think that I am 
 not wrong in saying that this 
 young man belonged to that 
 movement in the Anglican 
 Church which fights strongly 
 for a visible unity and for 
 Church tradition. I am so 
 made that I always tend to 
 agree with the man who is 
 speaking, so my companion 
 was encouraged by my sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 He went on : *' I can do with 
 a man that is out-and-out 
 anything. I can work with 
 a Papist ; I can work with a 
 Methodist, as far as I can con- 
 scientiously meet him on com- 
 mon ground, and I can respect 
 him if he conscientiously holds 
 that he is right and I am 
 
 5 
 
THE 
 
 wrong : but these fellows that 
 are neither one thing nor the 
 other — they are as dangerous 
 as rocks and shoals that are 
 just hidden under the water. 
 You never know when you 
 have them." 
 
 We were upon the broad 
 wooden side-walk of an ave- 
 nue leading from the central 
 street of the town to a region 
 of outstanding gardens and 
 pleasure-grounds, in which the 
 wooden villas of the citizens 
 stood among luxuriant trees. 
 It is a characteristic of Fen- 
 town that the old trees about 
 the place have been left 
 standing. 
 
 A new companion came to 
 my side, and he, as fate would 
 have it, was another clergy- 
 man. He was an older man, 
 with a genial, bearded face. 
 I think he belonged to that 
 party which takes its name 
 from the Evangel of whose 
 purity it professes itself the 
 guardian. 
 
 ** You are going to this 
 6 
 
 I 
 
 > ■' 
 
 
 i 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ! r 
 
 
 entertainment which Mr and 
 Mrs. Toyner are giving ? " 
 The cordiality of his common- 
 place remark had a certain 
 restraint in it. 
 
 " You are going also ? " 
 
 " No ; it is not a house at 
 which I visit. I have lived 
 here for twenty-five years, 
 and of course I have known 
 Mr. Toyner more or less all 
 that time. I do not know 
 how I shall be able to work 
 on the same Council with him ; 
 but we shall see. We, who 
 believe in the truth of re- 
 ligion, must hold our own if 
 we can." 
 
 I was to be the master of 
 the new schools. I pleased 
 him with my assent. 
 
 " I am rather sorry," he 
 continued, " to tell the truth, 
 that you should begin your 
 social life in Fentown by 
 visiting Mr. Toyner ; but of 
 course this afternoon it is 
 merely a public reception, and 
 after a time you will be able 
 to judge for yourself. I do not 
 
 7 
 
THE 
 
 hesitate to say that I consider 
 his influence, especially with 
 the young people, of a most 
 dangerous kind. For a long 
 time, you know, he and his 
 wife were quite ostracised — 
 not so much because of their 
 low origin as because of their 
 religious opinions. But of 
 late years even good Chris- 
 tians appear disposed to be 
 friendly with them. Money, 
 you know — money carries all 
 things before it." 
 
 " Yes, that is too often the 
 case." 
 
 " Well, I don't say that 
 Toyner doesn't hold up a 
 certain standard of morality 
 among the young men of the 
 place, but it's a pretty low 
 one ; and he has them all 
 under his influence. There 
 isn't a young fellow that walks 
 these streets, whether the son 
 of clergyman or beggar, who 
 is not free to go to that man's 
 house every evening and have 
 the run of his rooms and 
 his books. And Toyner and 
 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 his wife will sit down and 
 play cards with them ; or 
 they'll get in a lot of girls, 
 and have a dance, or theatri- 
 cals, — the thin end of the 
 wedge, you know, the thin 
 end of the wedge ! And all 
 the young men go to his 
 house, except a few that 
 we've got in our Christian 
 Association." 
 
 The speaker was stricter in 
 his views than I saw cause to 
 be ; but then, I knew some- 
 thing of his life ; he was giving 
 it day by day to save the men 
 of whom he was talking. He 
 had a better right than I to 
 know what was best for them. 
 
 "When youhave a thorough- 
 going man of the world," he 
 said, "every one knows what 
 that means, and there's not so 
 much harm done. But this 
 Mr. Toyner is always talking 
 about God, and using his in- 
 fluence to make people pray 
 to God. Such men are not 
 ready to pray until they are 
 prepared to give up the world ! 
 
 9 
 
THE 
 
 The God that he tells them 
 of is a fiction of his imagina- 
 tion ; indeed, I might say a 
 mere creature of his fancy, 
 who is going to save all men 
 in the end, whatever they do ! " 
 
 " A Universalist ! " 
 
 "Oh, worse than that — at 
 least, I have read the books 
 of Universalists who, though 
 their error was great, did not 
 appear to me s> far astray. 
 I cannot understand it ! I 
 cannot understand it ! " he 
 went on; "I cannot understand 
 the influence that he has ob- 
 tained over our more educated 
 class ; for twenty years ago he 
 was himself a low, besotted 
 drunkard, and his wife is the 
 daughter of a murderer ! Still 
 less do I understand how such 
 people can claim to be re- 
 ligious at all, and yet not see 
 to what awful evil the small 
 beginnings of vice must lead. 
 I tell you, if a man is allowed 
 by Providence to lead an easy 
 life, and remain* unfaithful, he 
 may still have some good metal 
 
 lO 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ich 
 
 in him which adversity might 
 refine ; but when people have 
 gone through all that Toyner 
 and his wife have been through 
 — not a child that has been 
 born to them but has died at 
 the breast — I say, when they 
 have been through all that, 
 and still lead a worldly, unsatis- 
 factory life, you may be sure 
 that there is nothing in them 
 that has the true ring of man- 
 hood or womanhood." 
 
 I was left alone to enter 
 Mr. Toyner's gates. I found 
 myself in a large pleasure- 
 ground, where Nature had 
 been guided, not curtailed, in 
 her work. I was walking 
 upon a winding drive, walled 
 on either side by a wild irre- 
 gular line of shrubs, where 
 the delicate forms of acacias 
 and crab-apples lifted them- 
 selves high in comparison to 
 the lower lilac and elderberry- 
 bushes. I watched the sunlit 
 acacias as they fluttered, spread- 
 ing their delicate leaves and 
 golden pods against the blue 
 
 II 
 
THE 
 
 above me. I made my way 
 leisurely in the direction of 
 music which I heard at some 
 distance. I had not advanced 
 far before another person came 
 into my path. 
 
 He was a slight, delicate 
 man of middle size. His hair 
 and moustache were almost 
 quite white. Something in 
 the air of neatness and per- 
 fection about his dress, in the 
 extreme gravity and clearness 
 of his grey eyes, even in the 
 fine texture of that long, thin, 
 drooping mou^^ache, made it 
 evident to me that this new 
 companion was not what we 
 call an ordinary person. 
 
 " Your friend did not come 
 in with you.*' The voice 
 spoke disappointment ; the 
 speaker looked wistfully at the 
 form of the retreating clergy- 
 man which he could just see 
 through a gap in the shrubs. 
 
 " You wished him to 
 
 come r 
 
 ?" 
 
 " I saw you coming. I 
 came toward the gate in the 
 
 12 
 
to 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 hope that he might come in." 
 Then he added a word of 
 cordial greeting. I perceived 
 that I was walkingwith my host. 
 
 There are some men to 
 whom one instinctively pays 
 the compliment of direct 
 speech. " I have been walk- 
 ing with two clergymen. I 
 understand that you differ 
 from both with regard to 
 religious opinion." 
 
 It appeared to me that after 
 this speech of mine he took 
 my measure quietly. He did 
 not say in so many words 
 that he did not see that this 
 difference of opinion was a 
 sufficient reason for their ab- 
 sence, but by some word or 
 sign he gave me to understand 
 that, adding : 
 
 " I feel myseif deprived of 
 a great benefit in being with- 
 out their society. They are 
 the two best and noblest men 
 I know." 
 
 "It is rare for men to take 
 pleasure in the society of their 
 opponents." 
 
 13 
 
1 
 
 THE 
 
 "Yet you will admit that 
 to be willing to learn from 
 those from whora we differ is 
 the only path to wisdom/* 
 
 " It is difficult to tread that 
 path without letting go what 
 we already have, and that 
 produces chaos." 
 
 With intensity both of 
 thought and feeling he took 
 up the words that I had 
 dropped half idly, and showed 
 me what he thought to be the 
 truth and untruth of them. 
 There was a grave earnestnesp- 
 in his speech which made his 
 opinion on this subject sud- 
 denly become of moment to 
 me, and his intensity did not 
 produce any of that sensation 
 of irritation or opposition 
 which the intensity of most 
 men produces as soon as it 
 is felt. 
 
 '* You think that the chief 
 obstacle which is hindering the 
 progress of true religion in 
 the world at present is that 
 while we will not learn from 
 those who disagree with us 
 
ZEIT-GElST 
 
 we can obtain no new light, 
 and that when we are wilUng 
 to reach after their light we 
 become also willing to let go 
 what we have had, so that the 
 world does not gain but los'^s 
 by the transaction. This is, I 
 admit, an obstacle to thought ; 
 but it is not the essential diffi- 
 culty of our age." 
 
 ** Let us consider," I said, 
 in my pedantic way, "' how 
 my difficulty may be over- 
 come, and then let us discuss 
 th?it one you consider to be 
 essential." 
 
 Toyner's choice of words, 
 like his appearance, betrayed 
 a strong, yet finely chiselled 
 personality. 
 
 " We are truly accustomed 
 now to the idea that what- 
 ever has life cannot possibly 
 remain unchanged, but must 
 always develop by leaving 
 some part behind and pro- 
 ducing some part that is 
 new. It is God's will that 
 the religious thought of the 
 world, which is made up of 
 
 IS 
 
THE 
 
 the thought of individuals, 
 shall proceed in this way, 
 whether we will or not, but 
 it must always help pro- 
 gress when we can make our 
 wills at one with God's in 
 this matter ; we go faster and 
 safer so. Now to say that to 
 submit willingly to God's law 
 of growth is to produce chaos 
 must certainly be a fallacy. 
 It must then be a fallacy to 
 argue that to keep a mind 
 open to all influences is an- 
 tagonistic to the truest religious 
 life ; we cannot — whether we 
 wish or not, we cannot — let 
 go any truth that has been 
 assimilated into our lives ; and 
 what truth we have not assimi- 
 lated it is no advantage to 
 hold without agitation. We 
 know better where we are 
 when we arc forced to sift 
 it. It is the very great 
 apparent advantage of recog- 
 nised order that deceives us ! 
 When we lose that apparent 
 advantage, when we lose, too, 
 the familiar names and symbols, 
 i6 
 
 -'-.& 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 I 
 
 • 
 
 "eni 
 
 [oo, 
 
 .Is, 
 
 I 
 
 and think, like children, that 
 we have lost the reality they 
 have expressed to us, a very 
 low state of things appears to 
 result. The strain and stress 
 of life become much greater. 
 Ah ! but, my friend, it is that 
 strain and stress that shape us 
 into the image of God." 
 
 " You hinted, I think, that 
 to your mind there was a more 
 real obstacle, one peculiar to 
 our age." 
 
 Ever since I first met him 
 I have been puzzled to know 
 how it was that I often knew 
 so nearly what Toyner meant 
 when he only partially ex- 
 pressed his thought ; he had 
 this power over my under- 
 standing. He was my master 
 from the first. 
 
 He laid his hand nowslightly 
 upon my arm, as though to em- 
 phasise what he said. 
 
 " It is a little hard to explain 
 it reverently," he said, " and 
 still harder to understand why 
 the difficulty should have come 
 about, but in our day it would 
 
 17 c 
 
 j.i-liiH ' 1.... - ' » m 
 
THE 
 
 seem that the nights of prayer 
 and the fresh intuition into 
 the laws of God's working, 
 which we see united in the life 
 of our great Example, have 
 become divorced. It is their 
 union again that we must 
 have — that we shall have ; 
 but at present there is the diffi- 
 culty for every man of us — 
 the men who lead us in either 
 path are different men and 
 lead different ways. Our law- 
 givers are not the men who 
 meet God upon the mount. 
 Our scientists are not the 
 teachers who are pre-eminent 
 for fasting and prayer. We 
 who to be true to ourselves 
 must follow in both paths find 
 our souls perplexed." 
 
 In front of us, as we turned 
 a curve in the drive, a bed of 
 scarlet lilies stood stately in 
 the sun, and a pair of bicker- 
 ing sparrows rose from the 
 fountain near which they 
 grew. Toyner made a slight 
 gesture of his hand. With the 
 eagerness of a child he asked : 
 
 i8 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 " Is it not hard to believe 
 that we may ask and expect 
 forgiveness and gifts from the 
 God who by slow inevitable 
 laws of growth clothes the 
 lilies, who ordains the fall of 
 every one of these sparrows, 
 foresees the fall and ordains 
 it — the God whose character 
 is expressed in physical law ? 
 The texts of Jesus have become 
 so trite that we forget that 
 they contain the same vision 
 of * God's mind in all things' 
 that makes it so hard to be- 
 lieve in a personaHty in God, 
 that makes prayer seem to us 
 so futile." 
 
 We came out of the shrub- 
 bery upon a bank that dropped 
 before us to a level lawn. I 
 found Tnyself in the midst of 
 a company of people among 
 whom were the other members 
 of the new School Council. 
 Below, upon the lawn, there 
 was a little spectacle going 
 on for our entertainment — 
 a morris-dance, simply and 
 gracefully performed by young 
 
 19 
 
THE 
 
 people dressed in quaintly 
 fashioned frocks of calico ; 
 there was good music too — one 
 or two instruments, to which 
 they danced. Round the other 
 side of the grass an avenue of 
 stately Canadian maples shut 
 in the view, except where 
 the river or the pale blue of 
 the eastern horizon was seen 
 in glimpses through their 
 branches. Behind us the sun's 
 declining rays fell upon an 
 old-fashioned garden of holly- 
 hocks and asters, so that the 
 effect, as one caught it turning 
 sideways, was like light upon 
 a stained-glass window, so rich 
 were the dyes. I saw all this 
 only as one sees the surround- 
 ings of some object that inte- 
 rests supremely. 
 
 The man who had been 
 walking with me said simply, 
 " This is my wife." 
 
 Before me stood a woman 
 who had the power that some 
 few women have of making 
 all those whom they gather 
 round them speak out clearly 
 
 20 
 
Wm 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and freshly the best that is 
 in them. 
 
 Ah! we live in a new 
 country. Its streets are not 
 paved with gold, nor is pro- 
 sperity to be attained without 
 toil; but it gives this one 
 advantage — room for growth ; 
 whatever virtue a soul coni 
 tains may reach its full height 
 and fragance and colour, if it 
 will. 
 
 I did not know then that 
 the ^ beginning of this pro- 
 vincial salon, which Toyner's 
 wife had kept about her for 
 so many years, and to which 
 she gave a genuine brilliance, 
 however raw the material, 
 had been a wooden shanty, 
 in which a small income was 
 made • by the sale of home- 
 brewed beer. rt-..,*^-^^^^ 
 
 I always remember "Ann 
 Toyner as I saw her that first 
 time. Her eyes were black 
 and still bright ; but when I 
 looked at them I remembered 
 the little children that had 
 died in her arms, and I knew 
 
 21 
 
 )ri ^\}i^\ ^f]! i 
 
 V. .1 
 
 ^^g, 
 
THE 
 
 that her hopes had not died 
 with them, but by that suffer- 
 ing had been transformed. 
 As I heard her talk, my own 
 hopes lifted themselves above 
 their ordinary level. 
 
 Husband and wife stood 
 together, and I noticed that 
 the white shawl that was 
 crossed Quakerwise over her 
 thin shoulders seemed like a 
 counterpart of his careful 
 dress, that the white tresses 
 that were beginning to show 
 among her black ones were 
 almost like a reflection of his 
 white hair. I felt that in 
 some curious way, although 
 each had so distinct and strong 
 a personality, they were only 
 perfect as a part of the cha- 
 racter which in their union 
 formed a perfect whole. They 
 stood erect and looked at. 
 us with frank, kindly eyes ; 
 we all found to our surprise 
 that we were saying what we 
 thought and felt, and not 
 what we supposed we ought 
 to say. 
 
 22 
 
 '.i 
 
f 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 As I talked and looked at 
 them, the words that I had 
 heard came back to my mind. 
 " His wife is the daughter of 
 a murderer, and he has come 
 up from the lowest, vilest 
 life." Some indistinct thought 
 worked through my mind 
 whose only expression was a 
 disconnected phrase : " I saw 
 a new heaven and a new 
 earth." 
 
 In the years since then I 
 have learned to know the 
 story of Toyner and his wife. 
 Now that they are gone away 
 from us, I will tell what I 
 know. His was a life which 
 shows that a man cut off from 
 all contact with his brother- 
 thinkers may still be worked 
 upon by the great over-soul 
 of thought : his is the story 
 of a weak man who lived a 
 strong life in a strength greater 
 than his own. 
 
 •23 
 
 Y 
 
THE 
 
 I 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the days when there were 
 not many people in Fentown 
 Falls, and when much money 
 was made by the lumber trade, 
 Bartholomew Toyner's father 
 grew rich. He was a Scotch- 
 man, not without some educa- 
 tion, and was ambitious for 
 his son ; but he was a hard, 
 ill-tempered man, and conse- 
 quently neither his example 
 nor his precepts carried any 
 weight whatever with the son 
 when he was grown. The 
 mother, who had begun life 
 cheerfully and sensibly, showed 
 the weakness of her character 
 in that she became habitually 
 peevish. She had enough to 
 make her so. All her pleasure 
 in life was centred in her son 
 Bart. Bart came out of school 
 to lounge upon the streets, to 
 smoke immoderately, and to 
 
 24 
 
 i 
 
[ ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 drink such large quantities of 
 what went into the country by 
 the name of " Jamaica," that in 
 a few years it came to pass 
 that he was nearly always 
 drunk. 
 
 Poor Bart ! the rum habit 
 worked its heavy chains upon 
 him before he was well aware 
 that his life had begun in 
 earnest ; and when he realised 
 that he was in possession of 
 his full manhood, and that the 
 prime of life was not far off, 
 he found himself chained hand 
 and foot, toihng heavily in 
 the most degrading servitude. 
 A few more years and he 
 realised also that, do what he 
 would, he could not set him- 
 self free. No one in the 
 world had any knowledge of 
 the struggle he made. Some 
 — his mother among them — 
 gave him credit for trying 
 now and then, and that was 
 a charitable view of his case. 
 How could any man know ? 
 He was not born with the 
 nature that reveals itself in 
 
 25 
 
THE 
 
 
 • 
 
 many words, or that gets rid of 
 its intolerable burdens of grief 
 and shame by passing them off 
 upon others. All that any one 
 could see was the inevitable 
 failure. 
 
 The failure was the chief 
 of what Bart himself saw. 
 That unquenchable instinct in 
 a man's heart that if he had 
 only tried a little harder he 
 would certainly have attained 
 to righteousness gave the 
 lie to his sense of agonising 
 struggle, with its desperate 
 rallies of courage and sinkings 
 of discouragement, gleams of 
 self-confidence, and foul sus- 
 picion of self, suspicion even 
 as to the reality of his own 
 effort. AH this was in the 
 region of unseen spirit, al- 
 most as much unseen to 
 those about him as are the 
 spirits of the dead men and 
 angels, often a mere matter 
 of faith to himself, so apart 
 did it seem from the outward 
 realities of life. 
 
 Outwardly the years went 
 26 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 easily enough. The father 
 railed and stormed, then re- 
 lapsed into a manner of silent 
 contempt ; but he did not drive 
 his son from the plain, com- 
 fortable home which he kept. 
 Bart would not work, but he 
 took some interest in reading. 
 Paper-covered infidel books, 
 and popular books on modern 
 science, were his choice rather 
 than fiction. The choice might 
 have been worse, for the fic- 
 tion to which he had access 
 was more enervating. Outside 
 his father's house he neglected 
 the better class of his neigh- 
 bours, and fraternised with the 
 men and women that lived 
 by the lowest bank of the 
 river ; but his life there was 
 still one into which the fresh 
 air and the sunshine of the 
 Canadian climate entered 
 largely. If he lounged all 
 day, it was on the benches in 
 the open air ; if he played 
 cards all night, he was not 
 given much money to waste ; 
 and there were few women to 
 
 27 
 
 ■Miilll 
 
THE 
 
 lend their companionship to 
 the many drunkards of whom 
 he was only one. Then, also, 
 Bart did not do even all the 
 evil that he might. What 
 was the result of that long 
 struggle of his which always 
 ended in failure ? The failure 
 was only apparent ; the suc- 
 cess was this mighty one — that 
 he did not go lower, he did 
 not leave Fentown Falls for 
 the next town upon the river, 
 a place called The Mills, 
 where his life could have been 
 much worse. He fell in love 
 with Ann Markham ; and al- 
 though she was the daughter 
 of the wickec^est man in Fen- 
 town, she was — according to 
 the phraseology of the place 
 — " a lady." She kept a 
 small beer-shop that was neat 
 and clean ; she lived so that 
 no man dared to say an un- 
 civil word to her or to the 
 sister whom she protected. 
 She did for her father very 
 much what Bart's father did 
 for him : she kept a decent 
 28 
 
 4. 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 nt 
 
 house over his head and 
 decent clothes upon his back, 
 and threw a mantle of thrifty 
 respectability over him. 
 
 Ann was no prude, and she 
 certainly was no saint. Twice 
 a week there was the sound of 
 fiddling and dancing feet in a 
 certain wooden hall that stood 
 near the river ; and there, with 
 the men ai;d women of the 
 worldly sort, Ann and her 
 sister danced. It was their 
 amusement ; they had no 
 other except the idle talking 
 and laughing that went on 
 over the table at which Ann 
 sold her home-brewed beer. 
 Ann's end in life was just the 
 ordinary one — respectability, 
 or a moderate righteousness, 
 first, and after that, pleasure. 
 She was a strong, vigorous, 
 sunbrowned maiden ; she 
 worked hard to brew her beer 
 and to sell it. She ruled her 
 sister with an inflexible will. 
 She had much to say to men 
 whom she liked and admired. 
 She neither liked nor admired 
 
 29 
 
THE 
 
 Bart Toyner, never threw him 
 a word unless in scorn ; yet he 
 loved her. She was the star 
 by which he steered his ship 
 in those intervals in which his 
 eyes were clear enough to 
 steer at^all ; and the ship did 
 not go; so far out of the track 
 as it would otherwise have 
 gone. When a man is in the 
 right course, with a good hope 
 of the port, rowing and steer- 
 ing, however toilsome, is a 
 cheerful thing ; but when the 
 track is so far lost that the 
 sailor scarcely hopes to regain 
 it — then perhaps (God only 
 knows) it requires more virtue 
 to row and steer at all, even 
 though it be done fitfully. 
 
 This belief that he could 
 never come to any desired 
 haven was the one force above 
 all others that went to the 
 ruining of Toyner's life. 
 
 30 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Bart Toyner was more than 
 thirty years old when the 
 period of his reformation came. 
 His father had grown old and 
 foolish. It was the breaking 
 down of his father's clear mind 
 that first started and shocked 
 Bart into some strong emo- 
 tion of filial respect and love ; 
 then came another agonising 
 struggle on his part to free 
 himself from his evil habits. 
 In this fit of sobriety he went 
 a journey to the nearest city 
 upon his father's business, and 
 there, after a few days, he 
 took to drinking harder than 
 ever, ceased to write home, 
 lost all the possessions that he 
 had taken with him, and sank 
 deep down into the mire of 
 the place. 
 
 The first thing that he 
 remembered in the awakening 
 
 31 
 
THE 
 
 
 •1 
 
 • 1 
 • 
 
 m 
 
 that followed was the face of 
 another man. It stood out 
 in the nebulous gathering of 
 his returning self-consciousness 
 like the face of an angel ; there 
 was the flame of enthusiasm 
 in the eyes, a force of will had 
 chiselled handsome features 
 into tense lines ; but in spite of 
 that, or rather perhaps because 
 of it, it was a gentle, happy 
 face. 
 
 It is happiness that is the 
 culmination of sainthood. You 
 may look through the pictures 
 of the saints of all ages and 
 find enthusiasm and righteous- 
 ness in many and the degree 
 of faith that these imply ; but 
 where you find joy too, there 
 has been the greatest faith, the 
 greatest saintliness. 
 
 Bart found himself clothed 
 and fed ; he felt the warm 
 clasp of a human hand in his, 
 and some self-respect came 
 back to him by the contact. 
 The face and the hand be- 
 longed to a mission preacher, 
 and Bart arose and followed 
 
 32 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 :hed 
 ^arm 
 
 his, 
 :ame 
 :act. 
 
 be- 
 ;her, 
 iwed 
 
 I 
 
 his friend to a place where 
 there was the sound of many- 
 feet hurrying and a great con- 
 course of people was gathered 
 i»n a wood without the town. 
 
 It was only with curiosity 
 that Bart looked about him 
 at the high trees that stretched 
 their green canopy above, at 
 the ppople who ranged them- 
 selves in a hollow of the wood 
 — one of nature's theatres. 
 Curiosity passed into strong 
 emotion of maudlin sentiment 
 when the great congregation 
 sang a hymn. He sat upon 
 a bench at the back and wept 
 tears that even to himself had 
 neither sense nor truth. Yet 
 there was in them the stirring 
 of something inarticulate, in- 
 comprehensible, like the stir- 
 ring that comes at spring-time 
 in the heart of the seed that 
 lies below the ground. After 
 that the voice of the preacher 
 began to make its way slowly 
 through the dull, dark mind 
 of the drunkard. 
 
 The preacher spoke of the 
 
 33 D 
 
THE 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 W! 
 
 \m 1 
 
 wonderful love of God mani- 
 fested in a certain definite 
 offer of salvation, a certain 
 bargain, which, if closed with, 
 would bring heaven to the 
 soul of every man. 
 
 The preacher belonged to 
 that period of this century 
 when the religious world first 
 threw off its contempt for the 
 present earthly life and began 
 to preach, not a salvation from 
 sin's punishment so much as a 
 salvation from sin. 
 
 It was the old cry : " Re- 
 pent, believe ; for the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand." The 
 doctrine that was set forth 
 had not only the vital growth 
 of ages in it, but it had ac- 
 creted the misunderstanding of 
 the ages also ; yet this doctrine 
 did not hide, it only limited, 
 the saving power of God. 
 " Believe," cried the preacher, 
 " in a just God and a Saviour." 
 So he preached Christ unto 
 them, just as he supposed 
 St. Paul to have done, wotting 
 nothing of the fact that every 
 
 34 
 
 I 
 
^ 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 
 I 
 
 :5 
 
 word and every symbol stand 
 for a different thought in the 
 minds of men with every revo- 
 lution of that glass by which 
 Time marks centuries. 
 
 It mattered nothing to Bart 
 just now all this about the 
 centuries and the doctrines; 
 the heart of the preaching was 
 the eternal truth that has been 
 growing brighter and brighter 
 since the world began — God, 
 a living Power, the Power of 
 Salvation. The salvation was 
 conditioned, truly ; but what 
 did conditions matter to Bart ! 
 He would have cast himself 
 into sea or fire to obtain 
 the strength that he coveted. 
 He eagerly cast aside the un- 
 belief he had imbibed from 
 books. He accepted all that 
 he was told to accept, with the 
 eager swallowing of a man 
 who is dying for the strength 
 of a drug that is given to him 
 in dilution. 
 
 At the end of the sermon 
 there was a great call made 
 upon all who desired to give 
 
 3S 
 
 mt^- 
 
THE 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 up their sins and to walk in 
 God's strength and righteous- 
 ness, to go forward and kneel 
 in token of their penitence 
 and pray for the grace which 
 they would assuredly receive. 
 
 This public penance was a 
 very little thing, like the dip- 
 ping in Jordan. It did not 
 seem little to Toyner. He 
 was thoroughly awake now, 
 roused for the hour to the 
 power of seeking God with 
 ill his mind, all his thought, 
 all his soul. The high tide of 
 life in him made the ordeal 
 terrible ; he tottered forward 
 and knelt where, in front of 
 the rostrum, sweet hay had 
 been strewn upon the ground. 
 A hundred penitents were 
 kneeling upon this carpet. 
 
 There was now no more loud 
 talking or singing. Silence was 
 allowed to spread her wings 
 within the woodland temple. 
 Toyner, kneeling, felt the in- 
 fluence of other human spirits 
 deeply vivified in the intensity 
 of prayer. He heard whispered 
 
 36 
 
 -,ji 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
mmm 
 
 mm 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 cries and the sound of tears, 
 the prayer of the publican, the 
 tears of the Magdalene, and 
 now and then there came a 
 glad thanksgiving of overflow- 
 ing joy. Toyner tried to re- 
 peat what he heard, hoping 
 thereby to give some expres- 
 sion to the need within him ; 
 but all that he could think of 
 was the craving for strong 
 drink that he knew would 
 return and that he knew he 
 could not resist. 
 
 He heard light footsteps, 
 and felt a strong arm embrac- 
 ing his own trembling frame. 
 The preacher had come to 
 kneel where he knelt, and to 
 pray, not for him, but with 
 him. 
 
 "I cannot," said Bart Toyner, 
 " I can't, I can't." 
 
 " Why not ? " whispered 
 the preacher. 
 
 " Because I know I shall 
 take to drink again." 
 
 " Which do you love best, 
 God or the drink ^ " asked 
 the preacher. " If you love 
 
 37 
 
 r: v»'r--»'^-f»<frTr *< 
 
THE 
 
 the drink best, you ought not 
 to be here ; if you love God 
 best, you need have no fear." 
 
 " God." The word em- 
 bodied the great new idea 
 which had entered Toyner's 
 soul, the idea of the love that 
 had power to help him. 
 
 " I want to get hold of 
 God," he said; *' but it isn't 
 any use, for I shall just go 
 and get drunk again." 
 
 " Dear, dear fellow," said 
 the young preacher, his arm 
 drawing closer round Bart, 
 " He is able and willing to 
 keep you ; all you have to do 
 is to take Him for your Master, 
 and He will come to you and 
 make a new man of you. He 
 will take the drink crave away. 
 He knows as well as you do 
 that you can't fight it." 
 
 *' I don't believe it," said 
 Toyner. 
 
 Then the young preacher 
 turned his beautiful face to- 
 ward the blue above the trees 
 and whispered a prayer : "Open 
 the eyes of our souls that we 
 
 38 
 
 I 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 may see Thee, and then we 
 shall know that Thou canst not 
 lie. Thy honour is pledged 
 to give Thy servants all they 
 need, and this man needs to 
 have the craving for drink 
 taken out of his body. He 
 has come at Thy call, willing 
 to be Thy slave ; Thou 
 canst not go back on Thy 
 promises. We know Thou 
 hast accepted him, because he 
 has come to Thee. We know 
 that Thou wilt give him what 
 he needs," — so the short sen- 
 tences of the whispered prayer 
 went on in quick transition 
 from entreaty to thanksgiving 
 for a gift received. Suddenly, 
 before the conclusion had 
 come, Bart stood up upon his 
 feet. 
 
 '' What is it, my brother .? " 
 asked the preacher. He too 
 had risen and stood with his 
 hand on Toyner's shoulder. 
 
 They were alone together, 
 these two. The great crowd 
 of the congregation had already 
 gone away ; those that re- 
 
 39 
 
THE 
 
 mained were each one so 
 intensely occupied with prayer 
 or adoration that they paid no 
 heed to others. 
 
 *'I feel — light,"said Toyner. 
 
 "Dear fellow," said the 
 .cher, " the devil has gone 
 L ^t of you. You are free 
 now because you are the slave 
 of Christ. Begin your service 
 to him by praising God ! " 
 
 Toyner stayed a week longer 
 in the place, lodging with the 
 young preacher. Day and 
 night they were close together. 
 A change had come to Toyner. 
 I^ was a miracle. The young 
 
 acher believed in such 
 11. icles, and because he be- 
 lieved he saw them often. 
 
 Toyner trembled and hoped, 
 and at length he too believed. 
 He believed that as long 
 as he willingly obeyed God 
 his old habits would not 
 triumph over him. The 
 physical health which so often 
 comes like a flood and re- 
 places disease at the shrines of 
 idol temples, of Romish saints, 
 40 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 f 
 
 or at the many Protestant 
 homes for faith-healing, had 
 undoubtedly come to Bart 
 Tovner. The stomach that 
 had been inflamed and almost 
 useless, now produced in him 
 a regular appetite for simple 
 nourishing food. The craving 
 for strong drink had passed 
 away, and with his whole 
 mind and heart he threw 
 himself into such service as 
 he believed to be acceptable 
 to God and the condition 
 upon which he held his 
 health and his freedom. At 
 the end of the week Toy- 
 ner went home to face the 
 old life again with no safe- 
 guard but the new inward 
 strength. No one there be- 
 lieved in his reformation. He 
 had lost money for his father 
 in his last debauch ; the man 
 who was virtually a partner 
 would not trust him again. 
 He had a nominal business 
 of his own, an agency which 
 he had heretofore neglected, 
 and now he worked hard, 
 
 4.1 
 
THE 
 
 living frugally, and for the 
 first time in his life earned 
 his own living. The rules of 
 conduct which the preacher 
 had laid down for him were 
 simple and broad. He was 
 to see ; God in everything, 
 accepting all events joyfully 
 from His hand ; he was so to 
 preach Him in life and word 
 that others would love Him ; 
 he was to do all his work as 
 unto a God who beheld and 
 cared for the minutest things 
 of earth ; he was to abstain, 
 not only from 'all sin, but 
 from all things that might 
 lead ^to evil. At first he 
 saw no contradiction in this 
 rule of life ; it seemed a plain 
 path, and he walked, nay ran, 
 upon it for a long distance. 
 
 Between Toyner and his 
 old friends the change of his 
 life and thoughts had made 
 the widest breach. That out- 
 ward show of companionship 
 remained was due only to 
 patient persistence on his part 
 and the endurance of the pain 
 42 
 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 ■•<*■ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and shame of being in society 
 where he was not wanted and 
 where he felt nothing con- 
 genial. There was a Scotch 
 minister who, with the people 
 of his congregation, had re- 
 ceived and befriended the re- 
 formed man ; but because of 
 Toyner's desire to follow the 
 most divine example, and also 
 because of his love to Ann 
 Markham, he chose the other 
 companionship. It was a 
 high ideal ; something warred 
 against "it which he could not 
 understand, and his patience 
 brought forth no mutual love. 
 
 When six months had passed 
 away, Toyner had gained with 
 his neighbours a character for 
 austerity in his personal habits 
 and constant companionship 
 with the rough and the poor. 
 The post of constable fell 
 vacant; Toyner's father had 
 been constable in his youth ; 
 Toyner was offered the post 
 now, and he took it. 
 
 The constable in such 
 villages as Fent^^ i was merely 
 
 43 
 
THE 
 
 It 
 
 ID 
 
 I 
 
 a respectable man who could 
 be called upon on rare occa- 
 sions to arrest a criminal. 
 Crime was seldom perpetrated 
 in Fentown, except when it 
 was of a nature that could 
 be winked at. Toyner had 
 no uniform; he was put in 
 possession of a pair of hand- 
 cuffs, which no one expected 
 him to use ; he was given a 
 nominal income ; and the 
 name of " constable " was a 
 public recognition that he was 
 reformed. 
 
 Toyner had had many 
 scruples of mind before he 
 took this office. The con- 
 siderations which induced him 
 to accept it were various. 
 The austere demand of law 
 and the service of God were 
 very near together in his 
 mind ; nor are they in any 
 strong mind ever separated 
 except in parable. 
 
 Bart Toyner, who had for 
 years appeared so weak and 
 witless, possessed in reality 
 that fine quality of brain and 
 
 44 
 
 
wma 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 heart which is so often a prey 
 to the temptation of intoxicants. 
 He was now working out all 
 the theory of the new life in 
 a mind that would not flinch 
 before, or shirk, the gleams 
 of truth struck from, sharp 
 contact of fact with fact as 
 the days and hours knocked 
 them together. For this 
 reason it could not be that 
 his path would remain that 
 plain path in which a man 
 could run seeing far before 
 him. Soon he only saw his 
 way step by step, around 
 there was darkness ; but 
 through that darkness, except 
 in one black hour, he always 
 saw the mount of transfigura- 
 tion and the light of heaven. 
 
 45 
 
THE 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Another six months passed, 
 and an event occurred which 
 gave a great shock to the 
 little community and gave 
 Toyner a pain of heart such 
 as almost nothing else could 
 have given. Ann's father, 
 John Markham, had a deadly 
 dispute with a man by the 
 name of Walker. Walker 
 was a comparatively new comer 
 to the town, or he would 
 have known better than to 
 gamble with Markham as he 
 did and arouse his enmity. 
 The feud lasted for a week, 
 and then Markham shot his 
 enemy with a borrowed fire- 
 arm. Walker was discovered 
 wounded, and cared for, but 
 with little hope of his recovery. 
 From all around the men 
 assembled to seize Markham, 
 but half a night had elapsed, 
 
 46 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and it was found that he had 
 made good his escape. When 
 the others had gone, Toyner 
 stood alone before Ann Mark- 
 ham. 
 
 I have often heard what 
 Toyner looked like in those 
 days. Slight as his theological 
 knowledge might be, he was 
 quite convinced that if religion 
 was anything it must be every- 
 thing, personal appearance in- 
 cluded. As he stood before 
 Ann, he appeared to be a 
 dapper, rather dandified man, 
 fo he had dressed himself 
 just as well as he could. 
 Everything that he did was 
 done just as well as he could 
 in those days ; that was the 
 reason he did not shirk the 
 inexpressibly painful duty 
 which now devolved on him. 
 
 You may picture him. His 
 clothes were black, his linen 
 good. He wore a large white 
 tie, which was the fashionable 
 thing in that time and place. 
 His long moustache, which 
 was fine rather than heavy, 
 
 47 
 
^. 
 
 THE 
 
 hung down to his chin on 
 either side of his mouth. He 
 did not look like a man who 
 would chance upon any strong 
 situation in life, for the 
 strength of circumstances is 
 the strength of the soul that 
 opposes them, and we are child- 
 ishly given to estimating the 
 strength of souls by certain 
 outward tests, although they 
 fail us daily. 
 
 " I have always been your 
 friend, Ann," said Toyner 
 sadly. 
 
 Ann tossed her head. "Not 
 with my leave." 
 
 " No,'* he assented ; ** but 
 I want to tell you now that if 
 we can't get on Markham's 
 track I shall have to spy on 
 you. You'll help him if you 
 can, of course." 
 
 " I don't know where he is," 
 said Ann sullenly. 
 
 **I do not believe you are 
 telling the truth" (sadly) ; ** but 
 you may believe me^ I have 
 warned you." 
 
 People in Fentown went to 
 
 A ^ 
 40 
 
 MMi 
 
 ^Kii,^ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 » 
 
 sleep early. At about eleven 
 that night all was still and 
 lonely about the weather- 
 stained, unpainted wooden 
 house in which Ann lived. 
 
 Ann closed her house for 
 the night. The work vas a 
 simple one : she set her knee 
 against the door to shut it 
 more firmly, and worked an 
 old nail into the latch. 
 Then she shook down the 
 scant cctton curtains that 
 were twisted aside from the 
 windows. There were three 
 windows, two in the living- 
 room (which was also kitchen 
 and beer-saloon) and one in 
 the bedroom ; that was the 
 whole of the house. There 
 was not an article of furniture 
 in the place that was not 
 absolutely necessary ; what 
 there was was clean. The 
 girl herself was clean, middle- 
 sized, and dressed in garments 
 that were old and worn ; 
 there was about her appearance 
 a certain brightness and quick- 
 ness, which is the best part of 
 
 49 E 
 
 ii 
 
 ■liMl 
 
i 
 
 TH|E 
 
 beauty and grace. The very 
 hair itself, turning black and 
 curly, from the temples, seemed 
 to lie glossy and smooth by 
 reason of character that willed 
 that it should lie so. 
 
 One small coal-oil lamp 
 was the light of the house. 
 When Ann had closed doors 
 and windows she took it up 
 and went into the] bedroom. 
 Neither room was small ; there 
 was a shadowy part round 
 their edges which the lam.p 
 did not brighten. In the 
 dimmer part of this inner 
 room was a bed, on which a 
 fair young girl was sleeping. 
 
 A curious thing now oc- 
 curred. Ann, placing herself 
 between the lamp and the 
 window, deliberately went 
 througha pantomimeof putting 
 herself to bed. She took care 
 that the shadow of the brush- 
 ing of her hair should be 
 seen upon the window-curtain. 
 She measured the distance, 
 and thn^w her silhouette clearly 
 upon it while she took off one 
 
 50 
 
 4 
 
 mt 
 
 ^mmmmmjamm 
 
! >5 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 or two of her outer garments. 
 Her face had resolution and 
 nervous eargerness written in 
 it, but there was nothing of 
 inward disquiet there; she 
 was wholly satisfied in her 
 own mind as to what she was 
 doing. It was not a very 
 profound mind, perhaps, but 
 it was like a weapon bur- 
 nished by constant and proper 
 use. 
 
 She removed her shadow 
 from the window-curtain when 
 she removed her lamp to the 
 bedside. She employed herself 
 there for a minute or two in 
 putting on the clothes she had 
 taken off, and in tightly fasten- 
 ing up the hair that she had 
 loosened ; then she put out the 
 lamp and got into bed. The 
 wooden bedstead creaked, and 
 rubbed against the side of the 
 house as she turned herself 
 upon it. The creaking and 
 rubbing could be heard on the 
 other side of the wall. 
 
 There was a man walking 
 like a sentry outside who did 
 
 51 
 
 if 
 
 ,JX. 
 
 ££ 
 
THE 
 
 hear. It was Bart Toyner, 
 the constable. 
 
 After he heard the bed creak 
 he still waited awhile, walking 
 slowly round the house in 
 silence and darkness. Then, 
 as he passed the side where the 
 bedroom was, there came the 
 sound of a slight sleeping snore, 
 repeated as regularly as the 
 breath might come and go in a 
 woman's breast. 
 
 After a while Toyner re- 
 treated with noiseless steps, 
 standing still when he had 
 moved away about fifty paces, 
 looking at the house again with 
 careful, suspicious eyes; then, 
 as if satisfied, he slid back the 
 iron shade that covered his 
 lantern and, lighting his own 
 steps, he walked away. 
 
 He had moved so quietly 
 that the girl who lay upon the 
 bed did not hear him. She 
 did not, in fact, know for 
 certain whether he had been 
 there or not, much less that he 
 had gone, so that she toilsomely 
 kept up the pretence of that 
 
 52 
 
 m 
 
 ii 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ft 
 
 <f. 
 
 l 
 
 gentle snore for half an hour 
 or more. It was very tiresome. 
 Her bright black eyes were 
 wide open as she lay performing 
 this exercise. Her face never 
 lost its look of strong resolution. 
 At length, true to her acting, 
 she moved her head sleepily, 
 sighed heavily, and relapsed 
 into silent breathing as a sleeper 
 might. It was the acting of a 
 true artist. 
 
 Half an hour more of silence 
 upon her bed, and she crept 
 off noiselessly; she lifted the 
 corner of the window-curtain 
 and looked out. There was 
 not a light to be seen in any 
 of the houses within sight, 
 there was not a sound to be 
 heard except the foam at the 
 foot of the falls, the lapping 
 of the nearer river, and the 
 voice of a myriad crickets 
 in the grass. She opened 
 the window silently. 
 
 " Bart," she whispered. 
 Then a little louder, " Bart — 
 Bart Toyner." 
 
 The one thing that she 
 
 53 
 
THE 
 
 wanted just then was to be 
 alone, and of all people in the 
 world Toyner was the man 
 whom she least wanted to meet. 
 Yet she called him. She got 
 out of the window and took a 
 few paces on one side and on 
 the other in the darkness, still 
 calling his name in a voice 
 of soft entreaty. In his old 
 drunken days she had scorned 
 him. She scorned him now 
 more than ever, but she still 
 believed that her call would 
 never reach his ear in vain. In 
 this hour of her extremity she 
 must make sure of his absence 
 by running the risk of having 
 to endure his nearer presence. 
 When she knew that he was 
 not there, she took a bundle 
 from inside the room, shut down 
 the window through v/hich she 
 had escaped, and wrapping her 
 head and hands in a thin black 
 shawl such as Indian women 
 drape themselves with, she sped 
 off over the dark grass to the 
 river. 
 
 Overhead the stars sparkled 
 
 54 
 
 riiu 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ■ f 
 
 in a sky that seemed almost 
 black. The houses and trees, 
 the thick scrubby bushes and 
 long grass, were just visible in 
 all the shades of monochrome 
 that night produces. 
 
 In a few minutes she was 
 beyond all the houses, gliding 
 through a wood by the river. 
 The trees were high and black, 
 and there was a faint musical 
 sound of wind in them. She 
 heard it as she heard everything. 
 IVIore than once she stopped, 
 not fearful, but watching. She 
 must have looked like the 
 spirit of primeval silence as 
 she stood at such moments, 
 lifting her shawl from her 
 head to listen ; then she went 
 on. She knew where a boat 
 had by chance been left that 
 day ; it was a small rough 
 boat, lying close under the 
 roots of a pine tree, and tied 
 to its trunk. In this she 
 bestowed her bundle, and 
 untymg the string, pushed 
 from the shore. She could 
 hardly see the opposite side 
 
 S5 
 
THE 
 
 of the little Ahwewee in the 
 darkness ; she rowed at once 
 into the midst of its rapid 
 current; once there, she dipped 
 her oars to steer rather than 
 to propel. She travelled 
 swiftly with the black stream. 
 
 For half an hour or more 
 she was only intent upon 
 steering her boat. Then, 
 when she had come about 
 three miles from the falls, she 
 was in still water, and began 
 rowing with all her strength 
 to make the boat shoot forward 
 as rapidly as before. 
 
 The water was as still now 
 as if the river had widened 
 and deepened into an inland 
 sea ; yet in the darkness to all 
 appearance the river was as 
 narrow, the outline of the trees 
 on either side appearing black 
 and high just within sight. 
 When the moon rose this 
 mystery of nature was re- 
 vealed, for the river was a 
 lake, spreading far and wide 
 on either side. The lake was 
 caused by dams built farther 
 
 56 
 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 's! 
 
 I " 
 
 ;\ 
 
 down the stream, and the forest 
 that had covered the ground 
 before still reared itself above 
 the water, the bare dead trees 
 standing thick, except in the 
 narrow, winding passage of the 
 original stream. 
 
 The moon rose large, very 
 large indeed, and very yellow. 
 There was smoke of distant 
 forest fires in the dry hot air, 
 which turned the moon as 
 golden as a pane of amber 
 glass. There was no fear of 
 fire in the forest through 
 which the boat was passing 
 other than that cold pretence 
 of yellow flames, the broken 
 reflections of the moon on 
 the wet mirror in which the 
 trees were growing. These 
 trees would not burn ; they 
 had been drowned long ago ! 
 They stood up now like 
 corpses or ghosts, rising from 
 the deathly flood, lifeless and 
 smooth ; ghastly, in that they 
 retained the naked shape that 
 they had had when alive. To 
 the east the reflection of the 
 
 57 
 
THE 
 
 moon was seen for a mile or 
 more under their grey out- 
 stretched branches, and on all 
 sides its light penetrated, show- 
 ing through what a strange 
 dead wilderness the one small 
 fragile boat was travelling. 
 
 Very little of the feeling of 
 the place entered the mind of 
 the girl who was working at 
 her oars with such strong, 
 swift strokes. Every day 
 through the ten or fifteen miles 
 of the dead forest a little snort- 
 ing steamboat passed, bearing 
 market produce and passengers. 
 The smoke of its funnel had 
 blasted all sense of the weird 
 picturesqueness of the place in 
 the minds of the inhabitants, 
 that is, they were accustomed to 
 it, and sentiment in most hearts 
 
 slowly killed by use and 
 
 is 
 
 wont, as this forest had been 
 killed by the encroaching water. 
 Ann Markham's was not a 
 mind which harboured very 
 much sentiment at that period 
 of her life; it was a keen, quick- 
 witted, practical mind. She 
 
 58 
 
f 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 was not afraid of the soli- 
 tude of the night, or of the 
 strange shapes and lights and 
 shadows about her. Now 
 that she knew for certain that 
 she was alone and unpursued, 
 she was for the time quite 
 satisfied. 
 
 A mile more down the wind- 
 ings of the lake, and Ann began 
 counting the trees between 
 certain landmarks. Then into 
 an opening between the trees 
 which could not have been 
 observed by a casual glance 
 she steered her boat, and 
 worked it on into a little 
 open passage-way among their 
 trunks. The way widened 
 as she followed it, and then 
 closed again. Where the 
 passage ended, one great tree 
 had fallen, and its trunk with 
 upturned branches was lying, 
 wedged between two standing 
 trunks, in an almost horizontal 
 position. On it a man was 
 sitting, a wild, miserable figure 
 of a man, who looked as if he 
 might have been some savage 
 
 S9 
 
 
If 
 
 THE 
 
 being who was at home there, 
 but who spoke in a language 
 too vicious and profane for 
 any savage. 
 
 He leaned out from his 
 branch as far as he dared, and 
 welcomed the girl with curses 
 because she had not come 
 sooner, because it was now 
 the small hours of the night 
 and he had expected her in 
 the evening. 
 
 " Be quiet, father," said the 
 girl ; *' what's the use of talking 
 like that!" Then she held the 
 boat under the tree and helped 
 him to slip down into it, where, 
 in spite of his rage, he stretched 
 his legs with an evident animal 
 satisfaction. He wallowed in 
 the straitened liberty that the 
 boat gave, lying down in the 
 bottom and gently kicking out 
 his cramped limbs, while the 
 girl held tight to the trees, 
 steadying the boat with her 
 feet. 
 
 It was this power of taking 
 an evident sensual satisfaction 
 in such small luxuries as he 
 
 60 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 was able to obtain that had 
 alone attached ?vlarkham to 
 his daughter. His character 
 belonged to a type found both 
 among men and women ; it 
 was a nature entirely selfish 
 and endowed with an in- 
 stinctive art in working upon 
 the unselfish sentiments of 
 others — an art U which even 
 creates unselfishness in other 
 selfish beings. 
 
 " I came as soon as I could," 
 she said. ^ " I suppose you did 
 not want me to put Toyner on 
 your track." 
 
 "Yee owe," said the wretched 
 man, stretching himself luxuri- 
 ously. " I've been a-standin' 
 up and a-sittin* down and a- 
 standin' up since last night, 
 
 an' " Here he suddenly 
 
 remembered something. He 
 sat up and looked round fear- 
 fully. 
 
 '* When it got dark before 
 the moon came I saw the 
 devil ! One ! I think there 
 was half a dozen of them ! 
 I saw them comin' at me in 
 6i 
 
THE 
 
 I 
 
 the air. I'd have gone mad if 
 they hadn't gone off when the 
 moon rose." 
 
 " Lie still, father, until I 
 give you something to eat," 
 she said. 
 
 While she was unfastening 
 her bundle, she looked about 
 he^, and saw how the spaces 
 of shadow between the grey 
 branches might easily seem to 
 take solid form and weird 
 shape to a brain that was 
 fevered with excitement of 
 crime and of flight and en- 
 forced vigil. She had a pain- 
 ful thing to tell this man — 
 that she could not, as she had 
 hoped, release him from his 
 desperate prison that night ; 
 but she did not tell him until 
 she had fed him first and given 
 him drink too. She insisted 
 upon his taking the food first. 
 It was highly seasoned, beef 
 with mustard upon it, and 
 pickles. All the while he 
 watched her hand with thirsty 
 eye. When he had gulped 
 his food to please her, she 
 
 62 
 
)> 
 
 en- 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 produced a small bottle. He 
 cursed her when he saw its 
 size, but all the same he held 
 out his hand for it eagerly 
 and drank its contents, shut- 
 ting his eyes with satisfaction 
 and Hcking his lips. 
 
 All this time she was steady- 
 ing the boat by holding on to 
 a tree with a strong arm. 
 
 " Now it's hard on you, 
 father, but you'll have to stay 
 here another night. Down at 
 The Mills they're watching for 
 you, and it would be sure 
 death for you to try and get 
 through the swamp, even if I 
 could take you in the boat to 
 the edge anywhere." 
 
 The man, who had been 
 entirely absorbed with eating 
 and drinking and stretch- 
 ing himself, now gave a low 
 howl of anguish ; then he 
 struggled to his knees and 
 shook his fist in her face. 
 
 " By I'll throw you out 
 
 of this 'ere boat, I will ; what 
 do yer come tellin* me such a 
 thing as that for .? Don't yer 
 
 63 
 
 '^i 
 
 aBaMU 
 
 HMiiii 
 

 THE 
 
 know I'd liefer die — don't yer 
 know that ? " He brought 
 his fist nearer and nearer to 
 her eyes. " Don't yer know 
 that ? " 
 
 It appeared that he would 
 have struck her, but by a 
 dexterous twist of her body 
 and a pull upon the tree she 
 jerked the boat so that he lost 
 his balance, not entirely, but 
 enough to make him right 
 himself with care and sit down 
 again, realising for the time 
 being that it was she who was 
 mistress of this question — who 
 should be thrown out of the 
 boat and drowned. 
 
 " Of course I'll row you to 
 The Mills, if it's to jail you 
 want to go ; but Walker is 
 pretty bad, they say. I think 
 it'll be murder they'll bring 
 you up for ; and it ain't no 
 sort of use trying to prove 
 that you didn't do it ! " 
 
 The miserable man put his 
 
 dirty knotted hands before his 
 
 face and howled again. But 
 
 even that involuntary sound 
 
 64 
 
 tl 
 
 A 
 
I 
 
 ZETT-GEIST 
 
 was furtive lest any one should 
 hear. He might have shrieked 
 and roared with all the 
 strength that was in him — 
 there was no human ear with- 
 in reach — but the instinct of 
 cowardice kept him from 
 making any more noise than 
 was necessary to rend and 
 break the heart of the woman 
 beside him, — that, although he 
 was only half conscious of it, 
 was his purpose in crying. 
 He had a fiendish desire to 
 make her suffer for bringing 
 him such news. 
 
 Ann was not given to feel- 
 ing for others, yet now it was 
 intense suffering to her to see 
 him shaking, writhing, moving 
 Hke a beast in pain. She did 
 not think of it as her suffer- 
 ing ; she transferred it all to 
 him, and supposed that it was 
 the realisation of his misery 
 that she experienced. 
 
 At last she said : " There's 
 
 one fellow up to the falls 
 
 that knows a track through 
 
 the north of the marsh to 
 
 6^ F 
 
 iMjii 
 
'i/l 
 
 THE 
 
 sound ground ; I heard him 
 tell it one day how he'd found 
 it out. It's that David Brown 
 that's been coming round to see 
 Christa. Christa can get the 
 chart he made from him by- 
 to-morrow night — I know she 
 can. I'll try to be here earlier 
 than I was to-night. And I 
 brought you strips of stuff, 
 father, so that you could tie 
 yourself on to the tree and have 
 a sort of a sleep; and I brought 
 a few drops of morphia, just 
 enough to make you feel 
 sleepy and stupid, and make 
 the time pass a bit quicker." 
 
 For a long while he writhed 
 and cried, telling her that it 
 took all the wits that he had 
 to keep awake enough to keep 
 the devils off him without 
 taking stuff to make him sleep, 
 and that he was sure she'd 
 never come back, and that he 
 would very likely be left on 
 the tree to rot or to fall into 
 the water. 
 
 All that he said came so near 
 to being true that it caused 
 66 
 
 i 
 I 
 
>) 
 
 ■t 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 her the utmost pain to hear 
 it. He was clever enough by 
 instinct, not by thought, to 
 know that mere idle cries 
 could not torture her as did 
 the true picture of the fears 
 and dangers that encompassed 
 him in his wild hiding-place. 
 The endurance of this torture 
 exhausted her as nothing had 
 ever exhausted her before ; 
 yet all the time she never 
 doubted but that the pain was 
 his, and that she was merely a 
 spectator. 
 
 She soothed him at last, not 
 by gentleness and caresses — 
 no such communication ever 
 passed between them — but by 
 plain, practical, hopeful sugges- 
 tions spoken out clearly in 
 the intervals of his whining. 
 At length she esteemed it 
 time to use the spur instead 
 of stroking him any longer. 
 " Get up on the tree, father, 
 and I will give you the rest of 
 the things when you are fixed 
 on the branch. If Toyner's 
 stirring again before I get 
 
 67 
 
 A 
 
 i ii r i ini i ii i 
 
THE 
 
 i 
 
 home, he'll find means to keep 
 me from coming to-morrow 
 night. Climb up now. I'll 
 give you the things. There 
 — there isn't enough of the 
 morphia drops to get you to 
 sleep, only to make you feel 
 easy ; and here's the strips of 
 blanket I've sewed together to 
 tie yourself on with. It's nice 
 and soft — climb up now and 
 fix yourself. It's Toyner that 
 will catch me, and you too, if 
 I don't get back. Lx)ok at 
 the moon — near th~ middle 
 of the sky." 
 
 She establiched him upon 
 the branch again with the com- 
 forts that she had promised, 
 and then she gave him one 
 thing more, of which she had 
 not spoken before. It was a 
 bag of food that would last, if 
 need be, for several days. 
 
 He took it as evidence that 
 she had lied to him in ler 
 assurance that she could return 
 the next night. As she moved 
 her boat out of the secret 
 openings among the dead trees, 
 68 
 
 ■'it. 
 
 f 
 
 ■is 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 she heard him whining with 
 fear and calling a volley of 
 curses after her. 
 
 That her father's words 
 were all profane did not 
 trouble Ann in the least. It 
 was a meaningless trick of 
 speech. Markham meant no 
 more at this time by his most 
 shocking oaths than does any 
 man by his habitual expletive. 
 Ann knew this perfectly. 
 God knew it too. 
 
 Yet if his profanity was 
 mechanical, the man himself 
 was without trace of good. 
 There was much reason that 
 Ann's heart should be wrung 
 with pity. It is the divine 
 quality of kinship that it pro- 
 duces pity even for what is 
 purely evil. Ann rowed her 
 boat homeward with a hard 
 determination in her heart to 
 save her father at any cost. 
 
 69 
 
 ■Ui^--^.a:y^- . ^*^ 
 
THE 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 
 sit. 
 
 An ho ir later the small 
 solitary boat crept up the 
 current of the moonlit river. 
 The weary girl plied her oars, 
 looking carefully for the nook 
 under the roots of the old pine 
 whence she had taken the boat. 
 
 She saw the place. She 
 even glanced anxiously about 
 the ground immediatelyaround 
 it, thinking that in the glamour 
 of lig'^t she could see every- 
 thing ; and yet in that rapid 
 glance, deluded, no doubt, 
 into supposing the light 
 greater than it was, she failed 
 to see a man who was stand- 
 ing ready to help her to moor 
 the boat. 
 
 Bart Toyner watched her 
 with a look of haggard 
 anxiety as she came nearer. 
 
 A uniform is a useful thing. 
 It is almost natural to an 
 70 
 
 m^ 
 
 % 
 
 ■■;i 
 
 w 
 
 i 
 
 A 
 
.-I 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 actor to play his part when 
 he has assumed its dress. A 
 man in any official capacity is 
 often just an actor, and the 
 best thing that he can do at 
 times is to act without a 
 thought as to how his inner 
 self accords with the action, 
 at least till we have attained 
 to a higher level of civilisation. 
 Toyner had no uniform, nor 
 had he masteied the philosophy 
 that underlies this instinct for 
 playing a part ; he had an idea 
 that the whole mind and soul 
 of him should be in conscien- 
 tious accord with all that he 
 did. It was this ideal that 
 made his fall certain. 
 
 He had no notion that the 
 girl had not seen him. Before 
 she got out, when she put her 
 hand to tether the boat, she 
 felt his hand gently taking 
 the rope from her and fell 
 back with a cry of fear. 
 
 In her wearied state she 
 could have sobbed with dis- 
 appointment. How much 
 had he discovered .'' If he 
 
 71 
 
f:i 
 
 THE 
 
 knew nothing more than 
 merely that she had returned 
 with the boat, how could it 
 be possible to elude him and 
 come again the next night ? 
 She thought of her father, and 
 her heart was full of pity ; 
 she thought that her own 
 plans were baffled, and she 
 was enraged. Both sentiments 
 fused into keener hatred of 
 Toyner ; but she remembered 
 — yes, even then she re- 
 membered quite clearly and 
 distinctly — that if the worst 
 came to the worst and she 
 could save her father in no 
 other way, she had one weapon 
 in reserve, one in which she 
 had perfect faith. 
 
 It was for this reason that 
 she sar still for a minute in 
 the boat, looking up at Toyner, 
 trying to pry into his attitude 
 toward her. At the end of 
 the minute he put out his 
 hand to lift her up, and she 
 leaned upon it. 
 
 Without hesitation she be- 
 gan to thread her way through 
 
 72 
 
T 
 
 i 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 the wood toward home, and 
 he walked by her side. He 
 might have been escorting 
 her from a dance, so quietly 
 they walked together, except 
 that the question of a man's 
 life or death which lay between 
 them seemed to surround 
 them with a strange atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
 At length Bart spoke. " I 
 don't know where you hav^e 
 been," he said. " I have been 
 patrolling the shore all night." 
 He paused awhile. " I 
 thought you were safe at 
 home." 
 
 She stopped short and 
 turned upon him. " Look 
 here ! what are you going to 
 do now ? It's a pretty mean 
 sort of business this you've 
 taken to, sneaking round 
 your old friends to do them 
 all the harm you can." 
 
 " It's the first time I knew 
 that you'd ever been a friend 
 of mine, Ann." He said this 
 in a sort of sad aside, anei 
 then : " You've sense enough 
 
 73 
 
THE 
 
 to know that when a man 
 shoots another man he's got 
 to be found and shut up for 
 the good of the country and 
 for his own good too. It's 
 the kindest thing that can be 
 done to a man sometimes, 
 shutting him up in jail." He 
 said this last quite as much by 
 way of explanation to himself 
 as to her. 
 
 " Or hanging him," she 
 suggested sarcastically. 
 
 He paused a moment. " I 
 hope he won't come to that." 
 
 " But you'll do all you can 
 to catch him, knowing that 
 it's like to come to that. 
 What's the good of hoping ^ " 
 
 He had only said it to 
 soothe her. He had another 
 self-justification. 
 
 " I can only do what I have 
 to do : it is not me that will 
 decide whether Walker dies 
 or not. At any rate, it ain't 
 no use to justify it to you. 
 It's natural that you should 
 look upon me as an enemy 
 just now; but all the police in 
 
 74 
 
 ^m 
 
nan 
 got 
 for 
 and 
 It's 
 be 
 
 she 
 "I 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 the country are more your 
 enemies than I am. You've 
 got him off now, I suppose; 
 however you've done it I don't 
 pretend to know. It'll be 
 some one else that catches 
 him if he's caught." 
 
 She wondered if he was only 
 saying this to try her, or if he 
 really believed that Markham 
 had gone far ; yet there was 
 small chance even then that 
 he would cease to watch her 
 the next night and the next. 
 He had shown both resolution 
 and diligence in this business 
 — qualities, as far as she knew, 
 so foreign to his character that 
 she smiled bitterly. 
 
 " A nice sort of thing re- 
 ligion is, to get out of the 
 mire yourself and spend your 
 time kicking your old friends 
 further in ! " 
 
 Now the fugitive had been 
 never a friend to Toyner, 
 except in the sense that he 
 had done more than any one 
 else to lead him into low 
 habits and keep him there. 
 
 IS 
 
 m 
 
V 
 
 I 
 
 THE 
 
 He had, in fact, been his 
 greatest enemy ; but that, 
 according to Toyner's new 
 notions, was the more reason 
 for counting him a friend, not 
 the less. 
 
 " Well, I grant *tain*t a very 
 grand sort of business being 
 constable," he said ; " to be a 
 preacher 'ud be finer perhaps ; 
 but this came to hand and 
 seemed the thing for me to 
 do. It ain't kicking men in 
 the mire to do all you can to 
 stop them making beasts of 
 themselves.'* 
 
 He stood idling in the 
 moonlight as he justified him- 
 self to this woman. Surely it 
 was only standing by his new 
 colours to try to make his 
 position seem right to her. 
 He had no hope in it — no 
 hope of persuading her, least 
 of all of bringing her nearer 
 to him ; if he had had that, 
 his dallying would have seemed 
 sinful, because it would have 
 chimed so perfectly with all 
 his natural desires. 
 
 76 
 
 t 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Ann took up her theme 
 again fiercely. " Look here, 
 Bart Toyner ; I want to know 
 one thing, honour bright — 
 that is," scornfully, " if you 
 care about honour now that 
 you've got religion." 
 
 He gave a silent sarcastic 
 smile, such as one would be- 
 stow upon a naughty, ignorant 
 child. " Well, at least as 
 much as I did before," he 
 said. 
 
 "Well, then, I want to 
 know if you're a-going to stop 
 spying on me now that father 
 has got well off ? There ain't 
 no cause nor reason for you to 
 hang about me any longer. You 
 know what my life has been, 
 and you know that through it 
 all I've kept myself like a lady. 
 It ain't nice, knowing as people 
 do that you came courting 
 once, 'tain't nice to have you 
 hanging round in this way." 
 
 He knew quite well that the 
 reason she gave for objecting 
 to his spying was not the true 
 one. He had enough insight 
 
 77 
 
 I 
 
 k 
 
 ^HUltti^Mttli 
 
mmm 
 
 THE 
 
 r 
 
 i' 
 
 . i 
 / ■ 
 
 s 
 
 I \ 
 
 i 
 
 i-1 
 
 into her character, enough 
 knowledge of her manner and 
 the modulations in her voice, 
 to have a pretty true instinct 
 as to when she was lying and 
 when she was not ; but he did 
 not know that the allusion 
 to the time when he used to 
 court her was thrown out to 
 produce just what it did in 
 him, a tender recollection of 
 his old hopes. 
 
 ** Until Markhamis arrested, 
 you know, and every one else 
 at Fentown knows, that it is my 
 duty to see that you don't com- 
 municate with him. You've 
 fooled me to-night, and I'll 
 have to keep closer watch ; but 
 if you don't want me to do 
 the watching,! can pay another 
 man." 
 
 She had hoped faintly that 
 he would have shown himself 
 less resolute ; now there was 
 only one thing to be done. 
 After all, she had known for 
 days that she might be obliged 
 to do it. 
 
 I wouldn't take it so hard, 
 
 78 
 
 (C 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Bart, if it was any one but 
 you," she said softly. She 
 went on to say other things 
 of this sort which would make 
 it appear that there was in 
 her heart an inward softness 
 toward him which she had 
 never yet revealed. With 
 womanly instinct she played 
 her little part well and did 
 not exaggerate ; but she was 
 not speaking now to the man 
 of drug-weakened mind and 
 over-stimulated sen'^e whom 
 she had known in former 
 years. 
 
 He spoke with pain and 
 shame in his voice and atti- 
 tude. " There isn't anything 
 that I could do for you, Ann, 
 that I wouldn't do as it is, 
 without you pretending that 
 way." 
 
 She did not quite take it in 
 at first that she could not 
 deceive him. 
 
 "I thought you used to 
 care about me," she said ; " I 
 thought perhaps you did yet ; . 
 I thought perhaps " — she put 
 
 79 
 
 \ 
 
/ 
 
 r 
 
 THE 
 
 well-feigned shyness into her 
 tone — " that you weren't the 
 sort that would turn away 
 from us just because of what 
 father has done. All the other 
 folks will, of course. I'm 
 pretty much alone." 
 
 *' I won't help you to break 
 the laws, Ann. Law and 
 righteousness is the same for 
 the most part. Your feeling 
 as a daughter leads you the 
 other way, of course ; but it 
 ain't no good — it won't do any 
 good to him in the long run, 
 and it would be wrong for me 
 to do anything but just what 
 I ought to do as constable. 
 When that's done we can talk 
 of being friends if you like, 
 but don't go acting a lie with 
 the hope of getting the better 
 of me. It hurts me to see 
 you do it, Ann." 
 
 For the first time there 
 dawned in her mind a new 
 respect for him, but that did 
 not alter her desperate resolve. 
 She had been standing before 
 him in the moonlight with 
 80 
 
new 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 downcast face ; now she sud- 
 denly threw up her head with 
 a gesture that reminded him 
 of the way a drowning man 
 throws up his hands. 
 
 "You've been wanting to 
 convert me/' she said. " You 
 want me to sign the pledge, 
 and to stop going to dances 
 and playing cards, and to 
 bring up Christa that way." 
 
 All the thoughts that he 
 had had since his reform of 
 what he could do for this girl 
 and her sister if she would 
 only let him came before his 
 heart now, lit through and 
 through with the light of his 
 love that at that moment 
 renewed its strength with a 
 power which appalled him. 
 
 She took a few steps nearer 
 to him. 
 
 " Father didn't mean to do 
 any harm," she whispered 
 hastily ; " he's got no more sin 
 on his soul than a child that 
 gets angry and fights for what 
 it wants. He's just like a 
 child, father is ; but it's been 
 
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 a lesson to him, and he'll 
 never do it again. Think of 
 the shame to Christa and me 
 if he was hanged. And Tve 
 striven so to keep us respect- 
 able — Bart, you know I 
 have. There's no shame in 
 the world like your father be- 
 ing " (there was a nervous 
 
 gasp in her throat before she 
 could go on) — "and he'd be 
 awfully frightened. Oh, you 
 don't know how frightened 
 he'd be! If I thought they 
 were going to do that to him, 
 it would just kill me. I'll do 
 anything ; I wouldn't mind so 
 much if they'd take me and 
 hang me instead — it wouldn't 
 scare me so much : but father 
 would be just like a child, 
 crying and crying and crying, 
 if they kept him in jail and 
 were going to do that in the 
 end. And then no one would 
 expect Christa and me to have 
 any more fun, and we never 
 would have any. There's a 
 way that you can get father 
 off, Bart, and give him at least 
 82 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 one more chance to run for 
 his life. If you'll do it, I'll do 
 whatever you want, — I'll sign 
 the pledge ; I'll go to church. ; 
 I'll teach Christa that way. 
 She and I won't dance any 
 more. You can count on me. 
 You can trust me. You know 
 that when I say a thing I'll 
 do it." 
 
 He realised now what had 
 happened to him — a thing 
 that of all things he had 
 learned to dread most, — a 
 desperate temptation. He 
 answered, and his tone and 
 manner gave her no glimpse 
 of the shock of opposing forces 
 that had taken place within a 
 heart that for many months 
 had been dwelling in the calm 
 of victory. 
 
 " I cannot do it, Ann." 
 "Bart Toyner," she said, 
 " I'm all alone in this world ; 
 there's not a soul to help me. 
 Every one's against me and 
 against him. Don't turn 
 against me ; I need your help 
 — oh, I need it ! I never pro- 
 
 83 
 
 Wi 
 
 
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 THE 
 
 
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 fessed to ^are about you; but 
 if your fa 'ler was in danger 
 of dying an awful death and 
 you came to me for help, I 
 wouldn't refuse you, you know 
 I wouldn't." 
 
 He only spoke now with 
 the wish to conceal from her 
 the panic within ; for with 
 the overwhelming desire to 
 yield to her had come a ghastly 
 fear that he was going to yield, 
 and faith and hope fled from 
 him. He saw himself standing 
 there face to face with his idea 
 of God, and this temptation 
 between him and God. The 
 temptation grew in magnitude, 
 and God withdrew His face. 
 
 " I know, Ann, it sounds 
 hard about your father " (me- 
 chanically) ; " but you must 
 try and think how it would 
 be if he was lying wounded 
 like Walker and some other 
 man had done it. Wouldn't 
 you think the law was in the 
 right then .? " 
 
 " No ! " (quickly). ^' If 
 father'd got a simple wound, 
 
 84 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and could be nursed and taken 
 care of comfortably until he 
 died, I wouldn't want any 
 man to be hanged for it. It's 
 an awful, awful thing to be 
 hanged." 
 
 She waited a moment, and 
 he did not speak. The lesser 
 light of night is fraught with 
 illusions. She thought that 
 she saw him there quite plainly 
 standing quiet and indifferent. 
 She was so accustomed to his 
 appearance — the carefulness of 
 his dress, the grave eyes, and 
 the thin, drooping moustache — 
 that her mind by habit filled 
 in these details which she did 
 not in reality see ; nor did she 
 see the look of agonised prayer 
 that came and went across 
 the habitual reserve of his 
 face. 
 
 " Can't you believe what I 
 say, Bart .? I say that I will 
 give up dancing and selling 
 beer, and sign the pledge, and 
 dress plain, and go to church. 
 I say I will do it and Christa 
 will do it ; and you can teach 
 
 85 
 
 ii^^to^ 
 
 .EL 
 
 i JjiPjJCT; [i"i i . i 'iwi"l ' '(-»«J'J 
 
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 THE 
 
 us all you've a mind to, day 
 in and day out, and we'll 
 learn if we can. Isn't it far 
 better to save Christa and me 
 — two souls, than to hunt one 
 poor man to death? Don't 
 you believe that I'll do what I 
 promise ? I'll go right home 
 now and give it to you in 
 writing, if you like." 
 
 '*I do believe you, Ann." 
 He stopped to regain the 
 steadiness of his voice. He 
 had had training in forcing 
 his voice in the last few months, 
 for he hated to bear verbal 
 testimony to his religious be- 
 liefs, and yet he had taught 
 himself to do it. He succeeded 
 in speaking steadily now, i»i 
 the same strong voice in which 
 he had learnt to pray at 
 meetings. It was not exactly 
 his natural voice. It sounded 
 sanctimonious and ostentatious, 
 but that was because he was 
 forced to conceal that his heart 
 within him was quaking. " I 
 do believe that you would do 
 what you say, Ann ; but it 
 
 86 
 
 I 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 : 
 
 isn't right to do evil that good 
 may come." 
 
 He did not appeal to her 
 pity ; he did not try to tell 
 her what it cost him to refuse. 
 If he could have made her 
 understand that, she might 
 have been turned from her 
 purpose. He realised only 
 the awful weakness and wicked- 
 ness of his heart. He seemed 
 to see those appetites which, 
 up to a few months before, 
 had possessed him like demons, 
 hovering near him in the air, 
 and he seemed to see God 
 holding them back from him, 
 but only for so long as he 
 resisted this temptation. 
 
 To her he said aloud : " I 
 cannot do it, Ann. In God's 
 strength I cannot and will not 
 do it." 
 
 Within his heart he seemed 
 to be shouting aloud to Heaven: 
 " My God, I will not do it, I 
 will not do it. Oh, my God!" 
 He turned his back upon her 
 and went quickly to the village, 
 only looking to see that at 
 
 87 
 
^ i *; 
 
 ! :i 
 
 f; S 
 
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 I 
 
 I 
 
 THE 
 
 some distance she followed 
 him, trudging humbly as a 
 squaw walks behind her Indian, 
 as far as her own door. 
 
 I 
 
 88 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 lowed 
 
 as a 
 
 idian, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 «When one drops one*s plum- 
 met into life anywhere it falls 
 the whole length of the line 
 we give it. The man who 
 can give his plummet the 
 longest line is he who realises 
 most surely that it has not 
 touched the bottom. 
 
 Bart Toyner betook himself 
 to prayer. He had learned 
 from his friend the preacher 
 that when a man is tempted 
 he must pray until he is given 
 the victory, and then, calm 
 and steadfast, go out to face 
 the world again. If Toyner's 
 had been a smaller soul, the 
 need of his life would have 
 imperatively demanded then 
 that just what he expected to 
 happen to him should happen, 
 and in some mysterious way 
 no doubt it would have 
 happened. 
 
 89 
 
 fl 
 
 T sfj !f i/s& tr::fSsr^ x«T:»i -( S!sm ^ iss m iMmiTJ^^ 
 
THE 
 
 
 > \ \ 
 
 ■i 
 
 ,) 
 
 When we quietly observe 
 religious life exactly as it is, 
 without the bias of any theory, 
 there are two constantly re- 
 curring facts which, taken 
 together, excite deep astonish- 
 ment : the fact that small 
 minds easily attain to a 
 certainty of faith to which 
 larger minds attain more 
 slowly and with much greater 
 distress ; and also the fact 
 that the happenings of life 
 do actually come in exact ac- 
 cordance to a man's faith — 
 faith being not the mcr ^ ex- 
 pectation that a thing is going 
 to take place, but the inner 
 eye that sees into the heart 
 of things, and knows that its 
 desire must inevitably take 
 place, and why. This sort 
 of faith, be it in a tiny or 
 great nature, comes trium- 
 phantly in actual fact to what 
 it predicts ; but the little heart 
 comes to it easily and pro- 
 duces trivial prayers, while 
 the big heart, thinking to 
 arrive with the same ease at 
 
 90 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 the same measure of triumph, 
 is beaten back time and time 
 and again. 
 
 Probably the explanation is 
 that the smaller mind has not 
 the same germinating power ; 
 there is not enough in it to 
 cause the long, slow growth 
 of root and stem, and there- 
 fore it soon puts forth its 
 little blossom. These things 
 all happen, of course, accord- 
 ing to eternal law of inward 
 development ; they are not 
 altered by any force from 
 without, because nothing is 
 without : the sun that makes 
 the daisy to blossom is just 
 that amount of sun that it 
 absorbs into itself, and so with 
 the acorn or the pine-cone. 
 These latter, however, do not 
 produce any bright immediate 
 blossom, though they ultimately 
 change the face of all that 
 spot of earth by the spread of 
 their roots and branches. 
 
 After praying a long time 
 Bart Toyner relapsed into 
 meditation, endeavouring to 
 
 91 
 
THE 
 
 contemplate those attributes of 
 his God which might bring 
 him the strength which he 
 had not yet attained, and just 
 here came to him the subtlest 
 and strongest reinforcement 
 to all those arguments which 
 were chiming together upon 
 what appeared to him the side 
 of evil. The God in whom 
 he had learned to trust was a 
 God who, moved by pity, had 
 come out of His natural path 
 to give a chance of salvation 
 to wicked men by the sacrifice 
 of Himself. To what did he 
 owe his own rescue but to 
 this special adjustment of law 
 made by God ? and how then 
 was it right for him to adhere 
 to the course the regular law 
 imposed on him and to hunt 
 down Markham ^ If he saved 
 Markham, he would answer 
 to the law for his own breach 
 of duty — this would be at least 
 some sacrifice. Was not this 
 course a more God-like one ? 
 
 There was one part of Toy- 
 ner that spoke out clearly and 
 
 92 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 said that his duty was exactly 
 what he had esteemed it to be 
 before Ann Markham appealed 
 to him. He believed this 
 part of him to be his con- 
 science. 
 
 All the rest of him slowly 
 veered round to thoughts of 
 mercy rather than legal duty ; 
 he thought of Ann and Christa 
 with hard, godless hearts, sur- 
 rounded by every form of 
 folly and sin, and he believed 
 that Ann would keep her 
 promise to him, and that 
 different surroundings would 
 give them different, souls. 
 Yet he felt convinced that 
 God and conscience forbade 
 this act of mercy. 
 
 One thing he was as certain 
 of now as he had been at the be- 
 ginning — that if he disobeyed 
 God, God would leave him to 
 the power of all his evil appe- 
 tites ; he felt already that his 
 heart gave out thoughts of 
 affection to his old evil life. 
 
 As the hours passed he 
 began to realise that he would 
 
I' ■ 
 
 'I 
 
 t> I 
 
 f' 
 
 II 1 
 > 1 
 
 THE 
 
 need to disobey God. He 
 found himself less and less 
 able to face the thought of 
 giving up this rare oppor- 
 tunity of winning Ann's favour 
 and an influence over her — 
 r nral influence at least ; his 
 mind was clear enough to see 
 that what was rained by dis- 
 obeying God's law was from 
 a religious point of view nil. 
 In his mind was the beginning 
 of a contempt for God's way 
 of saving him. If he was to 
 win his own soul by consigning 
 Ann and her father to probable 
 perdition, he did not want to 
 win it. 
 
 The August morning came 
 radiant and fresh ; the air, 
 sharp with a touch of frost 
 from neighbouring hills, bore 
 strength and lightness for 
 every creature. The sunlight 
 was gay on the little wooden 
 town, on its breezy gardens 
 and wastes of flowering weeds, 
 on the descent of the foaming 
 fall, on the clear brown river. 
 Even the sober wood of ash 
 
 94 
 
 MMIi 
 
to 
 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and maple glistened in the 
 morning light, and the birds 
 sang songs that in countries 
 where a longer summer reigns 
 are only heard in spring-time. 
 
 Bart Toyner went out of 
 the house exhausted and almost 
 hopeless. The source of his 
 strength had failed within him. 
 He looked forward to defeat. 
 
 As it happened Toyner's 
 official responsibility for Mark- 
 ham's arrest was to be 
 lightened. The Crown At- 
 torney for the county had 
 already communicated with 
 the local government, and a 
 detective had been sent, who 
 arrived that morning by the 
 little steamboat. Before Toy- 
 ner realised the situation he 
 found himself in consultation 
 with the new-comer as to the 
 best means of seeking Mark- 
 ham. Did the perfect righ- 
 teousness require that he 
 should betray Ann's confidence 
 and state that Markham was 
 in hiding somewhere within 
 reach .? Bart looked the 
 
 95 
 
 miib 
 
 mm 
 
 g|g 
 
THE 
 
 '» 
 
 
 .1 
 
 I' 
 
 ,;; 
 
 question for a moment in the 
 face, and trembled before it. 
 Then he set it aside un- 
 answered, resolved on reticence, 
 whether it was right or wrong. 
 
 The detective, finding that 
 Toyner had no clue to report, 
 soon went to drink Ann's beer, 
 on business intent. Bart kept 
 sedulously apart from this 
 interview. When it was over 
 the stranger took Toyner by 
 the arm and told him privately 
 that he was convinced that the 
 young woman knew nothing 
 whatever about the prisoner, 
 and as Markham had been 
 gone now forty-eight hours 
 it was his opinion tha it was 
 not near Fen town that he 
 would be found. 
 
 This communication was 
 made to Toyner in the public- 
 house, where they had both 
 gone the better to discuss 
 their affairs. Toyner had gone 
 in labouring under horrible 
 emotion. He believed that 
 he was going to get drunk, 
 and the result of his fear was 
 
 96 
 
 i|i 
 
 MMM^^^^^^^MirilH«H 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 that he broke his pledge, 
 giving as an excuse to the 
 by-standers that he felt ill. 
 Yet he did not get drunk. 
 
 Toyner saw the detective 
 depart by the afternoon boat, 
 and as he walked back upon 
 the bit of hot dusty road in 
 the sun he reeled, not with 
 the spirits he had taken, but 
 with the sickening sense that 
 his battle was lost. 
 
 Nothing seemed fair to him, 
 nothing attractive, but to drink 
 one more glass of spirits, and 
 to go and make promises to 
 Ann that would be sweet to 
 her ear. He knew that for 
 him it was the gate of death. 
 
 At this point the minister 
 met him, and jumped at once 
 to the conclusion that he was 
 drunk. The minister was 
 one of those good men who 
 found their faith in God upon 
 absolute want of faith in man. 
 His heart was better than 
 his head, as is the case with 
 all small-minded souls that 
 have come into conscious 
 
 I 
 
 ai 
 
 97 
 
 H 
 
TT 
 
 THE 
 
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 contact with God, but his 
 opinions ruled his official 
 conduct. *' I am afraid you 
 have been drinking, Toyner," 
 he said reproachfully. 
 
 The first three words, " I 
 am afraid," were enough for 
 Bart ; he was filled himself 
 with an all-pervading fear — a 
 fear of himself, a fear of God, 
 a fear of the devil who would 
 possess him again. He was 
 not drunk ; the fact that 
 drunkenness in him appeared 
 so likely to this man, who was 
 the best friend he had, com- 
 pleted in his heart the work 
 of revolt against the minister 
 and the minister's God. 
 What right had God to take 
 him up and clothe him and 
 keep him in his right mind 
 for a little while, just to let 
 him fall at ^he first oppor- 
 tunity ^ It was quite true 
 that he had deserved it, no 
 doubt ; he had done wrong, 
 and he was going to do wrong ; 
 but God, who had gone out 
 of His way to mercifully 
 98 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 no 
 
 
 convert him and keep him 
 straight for a while, could 
 certainly have gone on keep- 
 ing him if He had chosen. 
 His mind was a logical one. 
 He had been taught to praise 
 God for some extraordinary 
 favour towards him ; he had 
 been taught that the grace 
 which had changed his life for 
 good was in no degree his 
 own ; and why then was he 
 to bear all the disgrace of his 
 return to evil ^ 
 
 In the next hours he walked 
 the streets of the town, and 
 talked to other men when 
 need was, and did a little 
 business on his own account 
 in the agency in which he was 
 engaged, and went home and 
 took supper, watching the 
 vagaries of his father's senile 
 mania with more than common 
 pity for the old man. His 
 own wretchedness gave him 
 an aching heart of sympathy 
 for all the sorrow of others 
 which came across his mind 
 that day. 
 
 99 
 
 il 
 
 I. 
 
 — -^ - ~ 
 
-J/^ 
 
 ' I 
 
 THE 
 
 The whole day was a new 
 revelation to him of what 
 tenderness for others could be 
 and ought to be. 
 
 He did not hope to attain 
 to any working out of this 
 higher sympathy and pity 
 himself. The wonderful con- 
 fidence which his new faith 
 had so long given him, that 
 he was able in God's strength 
 to perform the higher rather 
 than the lower law of his 
 nature, had ebbed away. God's 
 strength was no longer with 
 him ; he was going to the 
 devil ; he could do nothing for 
 himself, little for others ; but 
 he sympathised as never before 
 with all poor lost souls. He 
 was a little surprised, as the 
 day wore to a close, that he 
 had been able to control his 
 craving, that he had not taken 
 more rum. Still, he knew that 
 he would soon be helpless. 
 It was his doom, for he could 
 awake in himself no further 
 feeling of repentance or desire 
 to return to God. 
 
 , lOO 
 
 ,.i...«.. 
 
 m^Htm^^^^mdMMa^^m^i^^mtm^am 
 
ZEIT-GEIJT 
 
 In the long day's struggle, 
 half conscious and half uncon- 
 scious, his love for Ann — and 
 is was not a bad sort of love 
 either — had triumphed over 
 what principle he had ; it had 
 survived the sudden shock that 
 had wrecked his faith. The 
 hell which he was experiencing 
 was intolerable now, because 
 of the heaven which he had 
 seen, and he could not forgive 
 the God who had ordained it. 
 The unreal notion that an 
 omnipotent God can permit 
 what He does not ordain 
 could have no weight with 
 him, for he was grappling with 
 reality. As he brooded bitterly 
 upon his own fate, his heart 
 became enlarged with tender- 
 ness for all other poor helpless 
 creatures like himself who 
 were under the same misrule. 
 
 His resolution was taken — 
 he would use his sobriety to 
 help Ann. It would not 
 profit himself, but still he 
 would win from her the 
 promise concerning her future 
 
 lOI 
 
THE 
 
 ' :i 
 
 1^ I 
 
 ii; I 
 
 life and Christa's which she 
 had offered him, and he would 
 go that night and do all that a 
 man could do to help the poor 
 wretch to whom his heart went 
 out with ever-increasing pity. 
 It would not be much, but he 
 would do what he could, and 
 after that he would tell the 
 authorities what he had done 
 and give up his office. He 
 had a very vague notion of 
 the penalties he would incur ; 
 if they put him in prison, so 
 much the better — it might save 
 him a little longer from drink- 
 ing himself to death. 
 
 Like an honest man he had 
 given up attempting to pull 
 God round to his own position. 
 He did not now think for a 
 moment that the act of love 
 and mercy which possessed his 
 soul was a pious one ; his 
 motive he believed to be 
 solely his pity for Markham 
 and his love for Ann, which, 
 being natural, he supposed to 
 be selfish, and, being selfish, 
 he knew to be unholy. 
 
 I02 
 
 mmmim 
 
 MUMMm 
 
 dAiOlMl 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 It had all come to this, 
 then — his piety, his reforma- 
 tion, his prayers, his thanks- 
 giving, his faith. His heart 
 within him gave a sneering 
 laugh. He was terribly to 
 blame, of course — he was a 
 reprobate ; but surely God was 
 to blame too ! 
 
 103 
 
. I: 
 
 THE 
 
 e 
 h 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ann Markham's thoughts 
 of Bart that day were chiefly 
 wondering thoughts. She 
 tried to think scornfully of 
 his refusal to help her ; 
 theo Jtically she derided the 
 religion that produced the 
 refusal, but in the bottom of 
 her heart she looked at it with 
 a wonder that was akin to 
 admiration. Then there was 
 a question whether he would 
 remain fixed in his resolution. 
 If this man did not love her 
 then Ann's confidence failed 
 her in respect to her judgment 
 of what was or was not; for 
 though she had regarded him 
 always as a person of not 
 much strength or importance, 
 not independent enough to be 
 anything more than the creature 
 of the woman whom he de- 
 sired to marry, yet, curiously 
 104 
 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 enough, she had believed that 
 his love for her had a strength 
 that would die hard. She did 
 not stop to ask herself how it 
 could be that a weak man 
 could love her strongly. Love, 
 in any constant and permanent 
 sense of the word, was an 
 almost unknown quality among 
 her companions, and yet she 
 had attributed it to Bart. 
 Well ! his refusal of last night 
 proved that she had been 
 mistaken — that was all. But 
 possibly the leaven of her 
 proposal would work, and he 
 would repent and come back 
 to her. The fact that he had 
 evidently not betrayed her to 
 the detective gave her hope 
 of this. Her thoughts about 
 Toyner were only subordinate 
 to the question, how she was 
 to rescue her father. With 
 the light and strength of the 
 morning, hope in other pos- 
 sibilities of eluding Bart, even 
 if he remained firm, came 
 back to her. She would at 
 least work on ; if she was 
 
 105 
 
 i ij 
 
 •iWI" 
 
 nm 
 
THE 
 
 baffled in the end, it would 
 be time enough to despair. 
 Her sister was not her con- 
 fidante, she was her tool. 
 
 Ann waited until the 
 shadow of the pear tree, 
 which with ripening fruit 
 overhung the gable of their 
 house, stretched itself far down 
 the bit of weedy grass that 
 sloped to the river. The grass 
 plot was wholly untended, but 
 nature had embroidered it with 
 flowers and ferns. 
 
 Ann sat sewing by the table 
 on which she kept her supply 
 of beer. She could not afford 
 to lose her sales to-day, although 
 she knew bitterly that most of 
 those who turned in for a 
 drink did so out of prying 
 curiosity. Even Christa, not 
 very quick of feeling, had felt 
 this, and had retired to lounge 
 on the bed in the inner room 
 with a paper novel. Christa 
 usually spent her afternoon in 
 preparing some cheap finery 
 to wear in the cool of the 
 evening, but she felt the family 
 1 06 
 
 tl 
 
 t] 
 
 I 
 
 
 !>« 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 
 disgrace and Ann's severity, 
 and was disheartened. As 
 Ann bided her time and con- 
 sidered her own occupation 
 and Christa's, she marvelled at 
 the audacity of the promise 
 which she had offered to give 
 Bart, yet so awful was the 
 question at stake that her 
 only wish was that he had 
 accepted it. 
 
 At four o'clock in the after- 
 noon she roused Christa and 
 apportioned a certain bit of 
 work to her. There was a 
 young man in Fentown called 
 David Brown, a comely young 
 fellow, belonging to one of 
 the richer families of the place. 
 He was good-natured, and an 
 athlete ; he had of late fallen 
 into the habit of dropping in 
 frequently to drink Ann's beer. 
 She felt no doubt that Christa 
 was his attraction. Some 
 weeks before he had boasted 
 that he had found the bed of 
 a creek which made its way 
 through the drowned forest, 
 and that by it he had paddled 
 107 
 
 ik 
 
THE 
 
 ) 
 
 his canoe through the marsh 
 thit lay to the north of the 
 lake. He had also boasted 
 that he had a secret way of 
 finding the creek again. Upon 
 considering his character Ann 
 believed that although the 
 statement was given boastfully 
 it was true. Brown had a 
 trace of Indian blood in him, 
 and possessed the faculties of 
 keen observation and good 
 memory. It was by the help of 
 this secret that she had hoped 
 to extrijate her father herself. 
 There was still a chance that 
 she might be able to use it. 
 
 '* Some men think the world 
 and all of a woman if they 
 can only get into the notion 
 that she is ill-used. David 
 may be more sweet on you 
 than ever," said Ann to 
 Christa. " Put on your white 
 frock : it's a little mussed, 
 so it won't look as if you 
 were trying to be fine ; don't 
 put on any sash, but do your 
 hair neatly." 
 
 She will look taking enough, 
 
 io8 
 
 
 laoi 
 
 ifl 
 
 ^I^MMi 
 
 IM*^ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 thought Ann to herself; she 
 did not despise herself for the 
 stratagem. It was part of 
 the hard, practical game that 
 she had played all her life, for 
 that matter ; she was not con- 
 scious of loving Christa any 
 more than she was conscious 
 of loving her father. It was 
 merely her wili that they 
 should have the utmost ad- 
 vantage in life that she could 
 obtain for them. Nothing 
 short of a moral revolution 
 could have changed this de- 
 termination in her. 
 
 When Christa had performed 
 her toilet, obeying Ann from 
 mere habit, Ann drilled her 
 in the thing she was to do. 
 Brown would of course suspect 
 what this information was to 
 be used for. Christa was to 
 coax him to promise secrecy. 
 Ann went over the details of 
 the plan again and again, until 
 she was quite sure that the 
 shallow forgetful child under- 
 stood the importance of her 
 mission. 
 
 109 
 
K 7 
 
 
 THE 
 
 Christa sat with her elbows 
 on the table and cried a little. 
 Her fair hair was curled low 
 over her eyes, the coarse white 
 dress hung limp but soft, 
 leaving her neck bare. With 
 all her motions her head 
 nodded on her slender grace- 
 ful neck, like a flower which 
 bows on its stalk. 
 
 Before this disaster Christa 
 had spent her life laughing ; 
 that had been more becoming 
 to her than sullenness and 
 tears. For all that, Ann was 
 not sorry that Christa's eyelids 
 should be red when David 
 Brown was seen slowly loung- 
 ing toward the window. 
 
 He had not been to see 
 them the day before; it was 
 apparent from his air that he 
 thought it was not quite the 
 respectable thing to do to-day. 
 He tried to approach the house 
 with a nonchalant^ happen-by- 
 chance air, so that if any one 
 saw him they would suppose 
 his stopping merely accidental. 
 
 Ann poured out his beer, 
 no 
 
 riKA^i^rfifllilH 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Christa looked at him with 
 eyes fiill of reproach. Then 
 she got ap and went away to 
 the doorstep, and stood looking 
 out. To the surprise of both 
 of them, David did not follow 
 her there. He stood still near 
 Ann. 
 
 " It's hard on Christa," said 
 Ann with a sigh ; " she has 
 been crying all day. Every 
 one will desert us now, and 
 we shall have to live alone 
 without friends." 
 
 " Oh no " (abruptly) ; ''no- 
 body blames you." 
 
 " I don't mind for myself 
 so much ; I don't care so much 
 about what people think, or 
 how they treat me." She 
 lifted her head proudly as she 
 spoke. *' But " (with pathos) 
 " it's hard on Christa." 
 
 " No ; you never think of 
 yourself, do you ? " David 
 giggled a little as he said it, 
 betraying that he felt his 
 words to be unusually personal. 
 Ann wondered for a minute 
 what could be the cause of 
 III 
 
I'// 
 
 THE 
 
 this giggle, and then she 
 returned to the subject of 
 Christa's suffering. 
 
 "Look here," he interrupted, 
 " if there's any little thing I 
 can do to help you, like lend- 
 ing you money if youVe left 
 hard up, or anything of that 
 sort, you know " (he was 
 blushing furiously now), it's 
 for you I'd do it," he blurted 
 out. " I don't care about 
 Christa." 
 
 " The silly fellow! " thought 
 Ann. She was six years older 
 than he, and she felt herself 
 to be twenty years older. She 
 entirely scorned his admiration 
 in its young folly ; but she did 
 not hesitate a moment to make 
 use of it. All her life had 
 been a long training in that 
 thrift which utilised every- 
 thing for family gain. She 
 was a thorough woman of 
 society, this girl who sat in 
 her backwoods cottage selling 
 beer. 
 
 She looked at the boy, and 
 a sudden glow of sensibility 
 
 112 
 
 
 
 
 ^mm 
 
 ^ M. ■ », .,:.^«-. 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 appeared in 'her face. " Oh, 
 David ! " she said ; " I thought 
 it was Christa." 
 
 "But it isn't Christa," he 
 stammered, grinning. He was 
 hugely pleased with the idea 
 that she had accepted his 
 declaration of courtship. 
 
 Half an hour later and Ann 
 had the secret of the new 
 track through the north of 
 the drowned forest, and Brown 
 had the wit not to ask her 
 what she wanted to do with 
 it. He had done more — he 
 had offered to row her boat 
 for her, but this Ann had 
 refused. 
 
 It was a curious thing, this 
 refusal. It arose purely from 
 principle on her part; she 
 had come to the limit which 
 the average mind sets to the 
 evil it will commit. She de- 
 ceived and cajoled the boy 
 without scruple, but she did 
 not allow him to break the 
 law. She remembered that 
 he had parents who valued his 
 good name more than he had 
 113 I 
 
THE 
 
 as yet learned to value it. He 
 was young ; he was in her 
 power ; and she declined his 
 further help. 
 
 Christa had wandered down 
 the grass to the river-side and 
 stood there pouting mean- 
 while. 
 
 vt 
 
 iH 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 [e 
 
 er 
 is 
 
 id 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 This incident with David 
 Brown and the getting posses- 
 sion of his chart was the one 
 stimulant that helped Ann to 
 endure this long day of in- 
 activity. It was like a small 
 thimbleful of wine to one 
 who longed for a generous 
 draught ; there was nothing 
 else to do but to wait, alert 
 for all chances that might help 
 her. Evening closed in ; the 
 sisters were left alone. Christa 
 returned indolently to loung- 
 ing upon the bed and reading 
 her novel. If Ann had had less 
 strength, she would have paced 
 the floor of the outer room in 
 impatience ; as it was she sat 
 still by the table which held 
 the beer and stitched her 
 seam diligently. About eight 
 o'clock she heard Toyner's 
 step. 
 
 "5 
 
 >4: 
 
 I 
 
u 
 
 THE 
 
 Was he going to haunt the 
 house again in order to keep 
 .her from going out of it ? 
 
 He came up to the door and 
 came in. 
 
 She was preparing herself to 
 act just as if she did not 
 know who had come, and did 
 not take much notice of him ; 
 but when he came up and she 
 looked at his face in the lamp- 
 light, she saw written in it the 
 struggle that he had gone 
 through. Its exact nature and 
 detail she was incapable of 
 conceiving, but one glance 
 proved to her its reality. She 
 was struck by the conscious- 
 ness of meeting an element 
 in life which was wholly new 
 to her. When such a thing 
 forces itself upon our attention, 
 however mdefinite and unex- 
 pressed may be our thought, 
 it is an experience never to be 
 forgotten. Ann fought against 
 her conviction. She began at 
 once, as intelligent humanity 
 always does, to explain away 
 what she did not understand, 
 ii6 
 
 hsm 
 
 Miaii 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 supposing by that means that 
 she could do away with its 
 existence. 
 
 " I think you are ill, Bart," 
 she said quickly. " It looks to 
 me as if you were in for a bout 
 of chills; and enough to give 
 it to you too, hanging about 
 in the woods all night." 
 
 He drew a chair close to 
 the table and sat down beside 
 her. 
 
 ** There isn't any chills in 
 the swamps about here," he 
 said ; " they are as wholesome 
 as dry land is." She saw by 
 this that he had no intention 
 of upbraiding her with his fall, 
 or of proclaiming the object of 
 his visit. She wanted to rouse 
 him into telling her some- 
 thing. 
 
 " I heard them saying some- 
 thing about you to-day that I 
 didn't believe a bit. I heard 
 you were in the saloon drink- 
 ing." 
 
 He took hold of the end 
 of her seam, passed his finger 
 along it as if examining the 
 117 
 
THE 
 
 fabric and the stitches. **I 
 took one glass," he said, with 
 the curious quiet gravity which 
 lay to-night like a spell upon 
 all his words and actions. 
 
 ** Well," she said cheerily, 
 "I don't believe in a mdn 
 making a slave of himself, not 
 to take a glass when he wants 
 it just because he sometimes 
 makes a beast of himself by 
 taking more than he ought." 
 
 " If you choose to think 
 black is white, Ann, it will 
 not make it that way." 
 
 "That's true,** she replied 
 compliantly ; " and you've got 
 more call to know than I 
 have, for I've never ' been 
 there.' " 
 
 "God forbid!" he said 
 with sudden intensity. All 
 the habits of thought of the 
 last year put strength into his 
 words. "If I thought you 
 ever could be * there,' Ann, it's 
 nothing to say that I'd die to 
 save you from it." 
 
 She let her thought dwell 
 for a moment upon the picture 
 U8 
 
 ) 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 of herself as a drunkard which 
 had caused such intense feel- 
 ing in him. ** I am not worth 
 his caring what becomes of me 
 in that way,'* she thought to 
 herself. It was the first time 
 it ever occurred to her to think 
 that she was unworthy of the 
 love he had for her; but at 
 the same moment she felt a 
 shadow extinguish the rays of 
 hope she had begun to feel, for 
 she believed, as Bart did, that 
 his piety was in direct oppo- 
 sition to the help he might 
 otherwise give her. She had 
 begun to hope that piety had 
 loosened its grasp upon him 
 for the time. 
 
 *' I don't know what's to be- 
 come of us, Christa and me," 
 she said despairingly ; *' if we 
 don't take to drink it will be 
 a wonder, everybody turning 
 the cold shoulder on us." 
 
 This was not her true 
 thought at all. She knew 
 herself to be quite incapable 
 of the future she suggested, 
 but the theme was excellently 
 
 119 
 
THE 
 
 adapted to work upon his 
 feelings. 
 
 " I'm going away to-night, 
 Ann," he said ; " perhaps I 
 won't see you again for a long 
 time ; but you know all that 
 you said you would promise 
 last night " 
 
 Her heart began to beat so 
 sharply against her side with 
 sudden hope, and perhaps 
 another feeling to which she 
 gave no name, that her answer 
 was- breathless. " Yes," she 
 said eagerly, " if " 
 
 He went on gravely: "I 
 am going to start to-night in 
 a row-boat for The Mills. 
 You can tell me where your 
 father is, and on my way I'll 
 do all I can to help him to 
 get away. It won't be much 
 use perhaps. It is most likely 
 that he will only get away from 
 this locality to be arrested in 
 another, but all that one man 
 can do to help him I will do; 
 but you'll have to give me the 
 promise first, and I'll trust you 
 to keep it." 
 
 1 20 
 
 \ 
 
 ■ i: 
 
 c 
 
 mamm 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 I 
 
 Ann said nothing. The 
 immediate weight of agonised 
 care for her father's life was 
 lifted off her ; but she had a 
 strange feeling that the man 
 who had taken her responsi- 
 bility had taken upon him its 
 suffering too in a deeper sense 
 than she could understand. It 
 flashed across her, not clearly 
 but indistinctly, that the chief 
 element in her suffering had 
 been the shame of defying law 
 and propriety rather than let 
 her father undergo a just 
 penalty. In some way or other 
 this had been all transferred 
 to Bart, and in the glimmering 
 understanding of his character 
 which was growing vdthin her, 
 she perceived that he had it 
 in him to suffer under it far 
 more intensely than she had 
 suffered. It was very strange 
 that just when she obtained 
 the promise she wanted from 
 him she would have been glad 
 to set him free from it ! 
 
 Within certain self-pleasing 
 limits Ann had always been 
 
 ' il 
 
 'I! 
 
 121 
 
THE 
 
 a good-natured and generous 
 person, and she experienced 
 a strong impulse of this good 
 nature and generosity just 
 nov/j but it was only for a 
 moment, and she stifled it as 
 a thing that was quite absurd. 
 Her father must be relieved, 
 of course, from his horrid 
 situation ; and, after all, Bart 
 could help him quite easily, 
 more easily than any other 
 man in the world could, and 
 then come back and go on 
 with his life as before. 
 Questions of conscience had 
 never, so far, clouded Ann's 
 mental horizon. A moment's 
 effort to regain her habitual 
 standpoint made it quite clear 
 to her that in this case it was 
 she, she and Christa, who 
 were making the sacrifice ; a 
 minute more, and she could 
 almost have found it in her 
 heart to grumble at the con- 
 dition of the vow which she 
 had so liberally sketched the 
 night before, and only the fact 
 that there was something about 
 122 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Bart which she did not at all 
 understand, and a fear that that 
 something might be a pro- 
 pensity to withdraw from his 
 engagement, made her sub- 
 missively adhere to it. 
 
 " Christa and I will sign 
 the pledge. We will give up 
 dancing and v/earing finery. 
 We will stop being friends 
 with worldly people, and we 
 will go to church and meetings, 
 and try to like them." Ann 
 repeated her vow. 
 
 Bart took the pen and ink 
 with which she chronicled her 
 sales of beer and wrote the 
 vow twice on two pages of 
 his note-book ; at the bottom 
 he added, " God helping me." 
 Ann signed them both, he 
 keeping one and giving her 
 the other. 
 
 This contract on Ann's 
 part had many of the elements 
 of faith in it — a wonderful 
 audacity of faith in her own 
 power to revolutionise her 
 life and control her sister's, 
 and all the unreasoning child- 
 
 123 
 
 \ 'I 
 
 \\\ 
 
 t 
 
T 
 
 THE 
 
 likeness of faith which could 
 launch itself boldly into an 
 unknown future without any 
 knowledge of what life would 
 be like there. 
 
 On the part of Toyner the 
 contract showed the power 
 that certain habits of thought, 
 although exercised only for a 
 few months, had over him. 
 Good people are fond of talk 
 about the weakness of good 
 habits compared with the 
 strength of bad ones. But, 
 given the same time to the 
 formation of each, the habits 
 which a man counts good 
 must be stronger than those 
 which he counts evil, because 
 the inner belief of his mind is 
 in unity with them. Toyner 
 believed to-night that he was 
 in open revolt against a rule 
 of life which he had found 
 himself unable to adhere to, 
 and against the God who had 
 ordained it ; but, all the same, 
 it was this rule, and faith in 
 the God which he had ap- 
 proached by means of it, that 
 124 
 
ap- 
 that 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 actuated him during this con- 
 ference with Ann. As a man 
 who had given up hope for 
 himself might desire salvation 
 for his child, so he gravely 
 and gently set her feet in what 
 he was accustomed to regard 
 as the path of life before he 
 himself left it. 
 
 12 
 
THE 
 
 '^ 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ann's plan of the way in 
 which Toyner more i lan any 
 other man could aid her father 
 was simple enough. He who 
 was known to be in pursuit of 
 Markham was to take him as 
 a friend through the town at 
 The Mills and start him on 
 the road at the other side. 
 Markham was little known at 
 The Mills, and no one would 
 be likely to take the com- 
 panion of the constable to be 
 the criminal for whose arrest 
 he had been making so much 
 agitation ; they were to travel 
 at the early hour of dawn 
 when few were stirring. This 
 plan, with such modifications 
 as his own good sense sug- 
 gested, Toyner was willing to 
 adopt. 
 
 He started earlier in the 
 evening than she had done, 
 
 126 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 in 
 
 having no particular desire for 
 secrecy. He told his friends 
 that he was going to row to 
 The Mills by night, and those 
 who heard him supposed that 
 he had gained some informa- 
 tion concerning Markham that 
 he thought it best to report. 
 It was a calm night ; the 
 smoke of distant burning was 
 still in the air. 
 
 He dropped down the river 
 in the dark hours before the 
 moonrise, and began to row 
 with strength, as Ann had 
 done, when he reached the 
 placid water. His boat was 
 light and well built. He 
 could see a few yards of dark 
 water in advance ; he could 
 see the dark outline of the 
 trees. The water was" deep ; 
 there were no rocks, no hidden 
 banks ; he did not make all 
 the haste he could, but rowed 
 on meditatively — he was always 
 more or less attracted by soli- 
 tude. To-night the mechanical 
 exercise, the darkness, the 
 absolute loneliness, were greater 
 127 
 
THE 
 
 rest to him than sleep would 
 have been. In a despairing 
 dull sort of way he was pray- 
 ing all the time ; his mind had 
 contracted a habit of prayer, 
 at least if expressing his 
 thoughts to the divine Being 
 in the belief that they were 
 heard may be called prayer. 
 
 Probably no one so oM or 
 so wise but that he will behave 
 childishly if he can but feel 
 himself exactly in the same 
 relation to a superior being 
 that a child feels to a grown 
 man. Toyner expressed his 
 grievance over and over again 
 with childlike simplicity ; he 
 explained to God that he could 
 not feel it to be right or fair 
 that, when he had prayed so very 
 much, and prayers of the sort to 
 which a blessing was promised, 
 he should be given over to the 
 damning power of circumstance, 
 launched in a career of back- 
 sliding, an 1 made thereby, 
 not only an object of greater 
 scorn to all men than if he had 
 never reformed, but actually, 
 128 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 as it appeared to him, more 
 worthy of scorn. 
 
 He did not expect his com- 
 plaints to be approved by the 
 Deity, and gained therefore no 
 satisfying sense that the prayer 
 had ascended to heaven. 
 
 The moon arose, the night was 
 very warm ; into the aromatic 
 haze a mist was arising from 
 the water on all sides. It was 
 not so thick but that he could 
 see his path through it in the 
 darkness; but when the light 
 came he found a thin film of 
 vapour between him and every- 
 thing at which he looked. 
 The light upon it was so great 
 that it seemed to be luminous 
 in itself, and it had a slightly 
 magnifying power, so that 
 distances looked greater, objects 
 looked larger, and the wild 
 desolate scene with which he 
 was familiar had an aspect 
 that was awful because so 
 unfamiliar. 
 
 When Toyner realised what 
 
 the full effect of the moonlight 
 
 was going to be, he dropped 
 
 129 
 
 K 
 
THE 
 
 his oars and sat still for a few 
 minutes, wondering if he would 
 be able to find the landmarks 
 that were necessary, so strange 
 did the landscape look, so 
 wonderful and gigantic were 
 the shapes which the dead 
 trees assumed. Then he con- 
 tinued his path, looking for a 
 tree that was black and blasted 
 by lightning. He was obliged 
 to grope his way close to the 
 trees ; thus his boat bumped 
 once or twice on hidden 
 stumps. It occurred to him to 
 think what a very lonely place 
 it would be to die in, and a 
 premonition that he was going 
 to die came across him. 
 
 Having found the blasted 
 tree, he counted four fallen 
 trees ; they came at intervals 
 in the outer row of standing 
 ones ; then there was a break 
 in the forest, and he turned 
 his boat into it and paused 
 to listen. 
 
 The sound that met his ear 
 — almost the strangest sound 
 that could have been heard in 
 130 
 

 ZEIT^GEIST 
 
 that place — was that of human 
 speech ; it was still some 
 distance away, but he heard 
 a voice raised in angry excite- 
 ment, supplicating, threatening, 
 defying, and complaining. 
 
 Toyner began to row down 
 the untried water-way which 
 was opened to his boat. The 
 idea that any one had found 
 Markham in such a place and 
 at such an hour was too 
 extraordinary to be credited. 
 Toyner looked eagerly into 
 the mist. He could see 
 nothing but queer-shaped 
 gulfs of light between trunks 
 and branches. Again his boat 
 rubbed unexpectedly against a 
 stump, and again the strange 
 premonition of approaching 
 death came over him. For a 
 moment he thought that his 
 wisest course would be to 
 return. Then he decided to 
 go forward ; but before obey- 
 ing this command, his mind 
 gave one of those sudden 
 self-attentive flashes the 
 capacity for which marks off 
 
 131 
 
i 
 
 i 
 
 THIE 
 
 the mind of the reflective 
 type from others. He saw 
 himself as he sat there, his 
 whole appearance and dress ; 
 he took in his history, and the 
 place to which that hour had 
 brought him, he, Bart Toyner, 
 a thin, somewhat drooping, 
 middle-aged man, unsuccessful, 
 because of his self-indulgence, 
 in all -that he had attempted, 
 yet having carried about with 
 him always high desires, which 
 had never had the slightest 
 realisation except in the one 
 clear shining space of vision 
 and victory which had been 
 his for a few months and 
 now was gone. The light 
 had mocked him; now perhaps 
 he was going to die ! 
 
 He pushed his boat on, 
 his sensations melting into 
 an excited blank of thought 
 in which curiosity was alone 
 apparent. He was growing 
 strangely excited after his 
 long calm despondency ; no 
 doubt the excitement of the 
 other, who was shouting and 
 132 
 
 ^ti^^m^i^M^^^M^i^^mt^ii^ 
 
I 
 
 on, 
 
 a 
 in 
 
 -— *>- 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 jabbering not far awny in 
 the moonlit night, altected 
 him. 
 
 He found his way through 
 the trees of the opening; 
 evidently the splash of his 
 oar was caught by the owner 
 of the noisy voice, for before 
 he could see any one a silence 
 succeeded to the noise, 
 sudden absolute silence, 
 itself shocking. 
 
 "Are you there, Mark- 
 ham ? " cried Toyner. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 Toyner peered into the 
 silver mist on all sides of 
 him; the sensation of the 
 diffused moonlight was almost 
 dazzling, the trees looked 
 far away, large and unreal. 
 At length among them he 
 saw the great log that had 
 fallen almost horizontal with 
 the water ; upon it a solitary 
 human figure stood erect 
 in an attitude of frenzied 
 defiance. 
 
 "I^have come from your 
 daughter, Markham." Then 
 
 133 
 
 rib 
 
 .^.^ 
 
THE 
 
 in a moment, by way of self- 
 explanation, he said," Toy ner." 
 
 The man addressed only 
 flung a clenched fist into the 
 air. The silence of his panto- 
 mime now that there was 
 some one to speak to was 
 made ghastly by the harangue 
 which he had been pouring 
 out upon the solitude. 
 
 " Have you lost your 
 head ? " asked Toyner. " I 
 have came from your daughter 
 — I'm not going to arrest 
 you, but set you down at 
 The Mills — you can go 
 where you will then." 
 
 He knew now the answer 
 to his first question. The 
 man before him was in some 
 stage of delirium. Toyner 
 wondered if any one could 
 secretly have brought him 
 drink. 
 
 There was nothing to be 
 done but to soothe as best 
 he could the other's fear and 
 enmity, and to bring the boat 
 close to the tree for him to 
 get in it. Whether he was 
 
 ik 
 
 sm 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 your 
 "I 
 
 ghter 
 arrest 
 m at 
 
 go 
 
 sane or mad, it was clearly 
 necessary to take him from 
 that place. Markham re- 
 tained a sullen silence, but 
 seemed to understand so far 
 that he ceased all threatening 
 gestures. His only move- 
 ments were certain turnings 
 and sudden crouchings as if 
 he saw or felt enemies about 
 him in the air. 
 
 " Now, get in," said Toyner. 
 He had secured the boat. 
 He pulled the other by the 
 legs, and guided him as he 
 slipped from his low bench. 
 *' Sit down ; you can't stand, 
 you know.'* 
 
 But Markham showed him- 
 self able to keep his balance, 
 and alert to help in pushing 
 off the boat. There was a 
 heavy boat-pole ready for use 
 in shallow water, and Mark- 
 ham for a minute handled it 
 adroitly, pushing off from his 
 tree. 
 
 Toyner turned his head 
 perforce to see that the boat 
 was not proceeding towards 
 
 ^3S 
 
 r 
 
TW 
 
 I I 
 
 w 
 
 iiHf i' 
 
 THE 
 
 some other dangerous obstacle. 
 Then Markham, with the 
 sudden swift cunning of 
 madness, lifted the butt end 
 of his pole and struck him 
 on the head. 
 
 Toyner sank beneath the 
 blow as an ox shivers and 
 sinks under the well-aimed 
 blow of the butcher. 
 
 Markham looked about him 
 for a moment v/ith an air of 
 childish triumph, looked not 
 alone at the form of the fallen 
 man before him, but all around 
 in the air, as if he had 
 triumphed not over one, but 
 over many. 
 
 No eye was theie to see 
 the look of fiendish revenge 
 that flitted next over the 
 nervous working of his face. 
 Then he fell quickly to work 
 changing garments with the 
 limp helpless body lying in 
 the bottom of the boat. 
 With unnatural strength he 
 lifted Toyner, dressed in his 
 own coat and hat, to the 
 horizontal log on which he 
 136 
 
 ^ 
 
 * 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 had lived for so long. He 
 took the long mesh of woollen 
 sheeting that his daughter had 
 brought to be a rest and 
 support to his own body, and 
 with it he tied Toyner to the 
 upright tree against which the 
 log was lying ; then, with an 
 additional touch of fiendish 
 satire, he took a bit of dry 
 bread out of the ample bag 
 of food which Ann had hung 
 there for his own needs, and 
 laid it on Toyner's knees. 
 Having done all this he 
 pushed his boat away with 
 reckless rapidity, and rowed 
 it back into the open water, 
 steering with that unerring 
 speed by which a somnambulist 
 is often seen to perform a 
 dangerous feat. 
 
 The moonlit mist and 
 the silence of night closed 
 around this lonely nook in 
 the dead forest and Toyner's 
 form sitting upon the fallen 
 log. In *:he open river, where 
 no line determined the meeting 
 oft' r)lacid moonlit water and 
 
 137 
 
Ml 
 
 THE 
 
 the still, moonlit mist, the boat 
 dashed like a dark streak up 
 the white winding Ahwewee 
 toward the green forest around 
 Fentown Falls. The small 
 dark figure of the man within 
 it was working at his oars 
 with a strength and regularity 
 of some powerful automaton. 
 At every stroke the prow 
 shot forward, and the sound 
 of the splashing oars made 
 soft echoes far and wide. 
 
 ■J8 
 
 H^M^i^lHilftfti 
 
 ■Afc 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 i| 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 When men have visions the 
 impression left upon their 
 minds is that light from the 
 unseen world of light has in 
 some way broken through into 
 the sphere of their cognizance. 
 The race in its ages of reflec- 
 tion has upon the whole come 
 to the conclusion that that 
 which actually takes place is 
 the gradual growth and the 
 sudden breaking forth of light 
 within the mysterious depths 
 of the man him.self. A new 
 explanation of a fact does not 
 do away with the fact. 
 
 Toyner was not dead, he 
 was stunned ; his head was 
 badly injured. When his 
 consciousness returned, and 
 through what process of in- 
 flammation and fever his 
 wounded head went in the 
 struggle of nature toward 
 
 ^39 
 
THE 
 
 recovery, was never clearly 
 known. His body, bound 
 with the soft torn cloths to 
 the upright tree, sagged more 
 and more until it found a rest 
 upon the inclined log. The 
 fresh sweet air from pine 
 woods, the cool vapours from 
 the water beneath him, were 
 nurses of wise and delicate 
 touch. The sun arose and 
 shone warmly, yet not hotly, 
 through the air in which dry 
 haze was thickening. The 
 dead trees stood in the calm 
 water, keeping silence as it 
 were, a hundred stalwart 
 guards with fingers at their 
 lips, lest any sound should dis- 
 turb the life that, with benefi- 
 cent patience, was little by little 
 restoring the wounded body 
 from within. Even the little 
 vulgarpuffing market-boat that 
 twice a day passed the windings 
 of the old river channel — 
 the only disturber of solitude 
 — was kept at so great a dis- 
 tance by this guard of silent 
 trees that no perception of her 
 140 
 
 rfHi^ 
 
 .^I^^I^^^^Mftftft 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 passing, and all the life and 
 perplexity of which she must 
 remind him, entered into 
 Toyner's half-closed avenues 
 of sense. 
 
 For two days the sun rose 
 on Bart through the mellow, 
 smoke-dimmed atmosphere. 
 Each night it lay in a red 
 cloud for an hour in the west, 
 tingeing and dyeing all the 
 mirror below the trees with 
 red. No one was there in the 
 desolate lake to see the twice- 
 told glory of that rosy flood 
 and firmament, unless it was 
 this wondrous light that first 
 penetrated the eyes of the 
 prisoner with soothing bright- 
 ness. 
 
 It was at some hour of light 
 — sunset or sunrise, or it h/ight 
 have been in the blending of 
 the mornings and the evenings 
 in that confusion of mind 
 which takes no heed of time — 
 that Toyner first began to know 
 himself. Then it was not of 
 himself that he took know- 
 ledge ; his heart in its waking 
 141 
 
 ffi 
 
THE 
 
 felt after something 1- else 
 around and beneath and above 
 him, everywhere, something 
 that meant light and comfort 
 and rest and love, something 
 that was very strong, that 
 was strength ; he himself, Bart 
 Toyner, was part of £ this 
 strength, and rested in it with 
 a rest and refreshing which is 
 impossible to weakness, how- 
 ever much it may crave. 
 
 It came to him as he lay 
 there, not knowing the where 
 or when of his knowledge — it 
 came to him that he had made 
 a great mistake, as a little 
 child makes a mistake in. 
 laughable ignorance. Indeed, 
 he laughed within himself as 
 he thought what a strange, 
 childish, grotesque notion he 
 had had, — he had thought, he 
 had actually thought, that God 
 was only a part of things ; that 
 he, Bart Toyner, could turn 
 away from God ; that God's 
 power was only with him 
 when he supposed himself to 
 be obedient to Him ! Yes, he 
 142 
 
 
 m 
 
 ei 
 
 G 
 
 j^^Am^mjLMM^A^ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 had thought this ; but now he 
 knew that God was all and 
 in all. 
 
 There came to him, trooping 
 with this new joy of know- 
 ledge, the sensuous sight and 
 sound and smell of many 
 things that he had known, but 
 had not understood, before. 
 All the spring-times through 
 which he had walked uncon- 
 scious of their meaning, came 
 to him. There was a sound 
 in his ears of delicate flowers 
 springing to light through 
 dewy moss, of buds bursting, 
 and he saw the glancing of 
 myriad tiny leaves upon the 
 grey old trees. With pre- 
 cisely the same sense of 
 sweetness came the vision 
 of days when autumn rain 
 was falling, and the red and 
 sear leaf, the nut, the pine- 
 cone and the flower-seed were 
 dropping into the cold wet 
 earth. Was life in the spring, 
 and death in the autumn ? 
 Was the power and love of 
 God not resting in the damp 
 
 H3 
 
 ! \ 
 
THE . 
 
 fallen things that lay rotting 
 in the ground ? 
 
 There came before him a 
 troop of the little children of 
 Fentown, all the rosy-cheeked 
 faces and laughing eyes and 
 lithe little dancing forms that 
 he had ever taken the trouble 
 to notice ; and Ann and 
 Christa came and stood with 
 them — Christa with her 
 dancing finery, with her 
 beautiful, thoughtless, un- 
 emotional face, her yellow hair, 
 and soft white hands ; and 
 Ann, a thousand times more 
 beautiful to him, with her sun- 
 brown tints and hazel eyes, 
 so full of energy and fore- 
 thought, her dark neat hair and 
 working -dress and hardened 
 hands — this was beauty ! Over 
 against it he saw Markham, 
 blear-eyed, unkempt and dirty; 
 and his own father, a gaunt, 
 idiotic v/reck of respectable 
 manhood ; and his mother, 
 faded, worn, and peevish ; 
 with them stood the hunch- 
 backed baker of Fentown and 
 144 
 
 j^ 
 
 •'*-*''''~' 
 
 ttsamam^mMiatmam 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 all the coarse and ugly sons 
 of toil that frequented its 
 wharfs. There was not a 
 child or a maiden among those 
 he saw first who did not owe 
 their life to one of these. 
 With the children and the 
 maidens there were pleasure 
 and hope ; with the older 
 men and women there were 
 effort and failure, sin and 
 despair. The life that was in 
 all of them, was it partly of 
 God and partly of themselves ? 
 He laughed again at the 
 question. The life that was 
 in them all was all of God, 
 every impulse, every act. The 
 energy that thrilled them 
 through, by which they acted, 
 if only as brutes act, by which 
 they spoke, if only to lie, by 
 which they thought and felt, 
 even when thought and feeling 
 were false and bad, the energy 
 which upheld them was all of 
 God. That devil, too, that 
 he saw standing close by and 
 whispering to them — his form 
 was dim and fading ; he was 
 145 L 
 
I 
 
 THE 
 
 not sure whether he was a 
 reality or a thought, but — if 
 he had life, was it his own? 
 Somewhere, he could not 
 remember where or when, he 
 had heard the voice of truth 
 saying, "Thou couldst have 
 no power against me except it 
 were given thee from above." 
 The strange complexity of 
 dreams, which seems so foolish, 
 brings them nearer to reality 
 than we suppose, for there is 
 nothing real which has not 
 manifold meanings. Before 
 this vision of his townspeople 
 faded, Bart saw Ann slowly 
 walk over from the group in 
 which she had risen to be a 
 queen, to that group whose 
 members were worn with dis- 
 appointment and age ; as she 
 went he saw her perfectly as 
 he had never seen her before, 
 the hard shallow thoughts that 
 were woven in with her un- 
 remitting effort to do always 
 the thing that she had set 
 herself to do ; and he saw, too, 
 a nature that was beneath this 
 146 
 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 »> 
 
 outer range of activity, a small 
 trembling fountain of feeling 
 suppressed and shut from the 
 light. In some strange way 
 as she stood, having grown 
 older by transition from one 
 group to the other, he saw 
 that this inner fountain of 
 strength was increasing and 
 overflowing all that other part 
 which had before made up 
 almost the entire personality 
 of the woman. This change 
 did not take place visibly in 
 the other people among whom 
 she stood. It was in Ann he 
 saw the change. He felt very 
 glad he had seen this ; he 
 seemed to think of nothing 
 else for a long time. 
 
 He forgot then all the detail 
 of that which he had seen and 
 thought, and it seemed to him 
 that he spent a long time just 
 rejoicing in the divine life by 
 which all things were, and by 
 which they changed, growing 
 by transformation into a glory 
 which was still indistinct to 
 him, too far ofF to be seen in any 
 
 H7 
 
 IWHHilMliMliHHI 
 
^m 
 
 THE 
 
 way except that its light came 
 as the light comes from stars 
 which we say we see and have 
 never really seen at all. 
 
 Through this joy and light 
 the details of life began to 
 show again. The two forces 
 which he had always supposed 
 had moulded his life acted his 
 early scenes over again. His 
 young mother, before the 
 shadow of despair had come 
 over her, was seen waiting 
 upon all his boyish footsteps 
 with cheerful love and patience, 
 trying to guide and to help, 
 but trying much more to com- 
 fort and to please ; and his 
 father, with a strong body 
 and the strength of fixed 
 opinion and formed habits, 
 having no desire for his son 
 except to train and form him 
 as he himself was trained and 
 formed, was seen darkening 
 all the boy's happiness with 
 unreasonable severity, which 
 hardened and sharpened with 
 the opposition of years into 
 selfish cruelty. Toyner had 
 
 148 
 
 Hi 
 
 ISS 
 
 AJBB 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 often seen these scenes before ; 
 all that was new to him now 
 was that they stood in the 
 vivid light of a new inter- 
 pretation. Ah ! the father's 
 cruelty, the irritable self-love, 
 the incapacity to recognise any 
 form of life but his own, ii; 
 was of God, — not a high mani- 
 festation : the bat is lower than 
 the bird, and yet it is of God. 
 Bart saw now the one great 
 opportunity of life ! He saw 
 that the whole of the universe 
 goes to develop character, and 
 the one chief heavenly food set 
 within reach of the growing 
 character for its nourishment 
 is the opportunity to embrace 
 malice with love, to gather 
 it in the arms of patience, 
 convert its shame into glory 
 by willing endurance. 
 
 Had he, Bart Toyner, then 
 really been given the power in 
 that beginning of life to put 
 out his hand and take this 
 fruit which would have given 
 him such great strength and 
 stature, or had he only had 
 
 H9 
 
 • \i 
 
THE 
 
 strength just for what he had 
 done and nothing more ? 
 
 The answer seemed to come 
 to him from all that he had 
 read of the growth of things. 
 He looked into the forests, 
 into the life of the creatures 
 that now lived in them ; he 
 saw the fish in the rivers and 
 the birds in the air, everywhere 
 now roots were feeling under 
 the dark ground for just the 
 food that was needed, and the 
 birds flew open-mouthed, and 
 the fishes darted here and 
 there, and the squirrels hoarded 
 their nuts. Everywhere in 
 the past the growth of ages 
 had been bringing together 
 these creatures and their food 
 by slowly developing in them 
 new powers to assimilate new 
 foods. What then of those 
 that pined and dwindled when 
 the organism was not quite 
 strong enough and the old 
 food was taken away ? Ah, 
 well ! they fell — fell as the 
 sparrows fall, not one of them 
 without God. And what of 
 150 
 
ZEIT GEIST 
 
 man rising through ages from 
 beast to sainthood, rising from 
 the mere dominion of physical 
 law which works out its own 
 obedience into the moral region, 
 where a perpetual choice is 
 ordained of God, and the con- 
 sequences of each choice or- 
 dained? Was not the lower 
 choice often inevitable ? Who 
 could tell when or where 
 except God Himself? And 
 the higher choice the only- 
 food by which character can 
 grow ! So men must often 
 fall. Fall to what end ? To 
 pass into that boundless gulf 
 of distant light into which 
 everything is passing, passing 
 straight by the assimilation of 
 its proper food, circuitously by 
 weakness and failure, but still 
 coming, growing, reaching out 
 into infinite light, for all is of 
 God, and God is Love. 
 
 All Toyner's thought and 
 sense seemed to lose hold again 
 of everythingbuithat first reali- 
 sation of the surrounding glory 
 and joy and strength, and the 
 
r 1 
 
 I 
 
 THE 
 
 feeling that he himself had to 
 rest for a little while before 
 any new thing was given him 
 to do. 
 
 His body lay back upon the 
 grey lifeless branch, wrapped 
 in the ragged, soiled garment 
 that Markham had put upon 
 him ; the silence of night 
 came again over the water and 
 the grey dead trees, and nature 
 went on steadily and quietly 
 with her work of healing. 
 
 li 
 
 152 
 
 L 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 1/ 
 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 When ToynerhadleftFentown 
 to go and rescue Markham, 
 Ann had stood a good way 
 off upon the dark shore just 
 •to satisfy herself that he had 
 got into the boat and rowed 
 down the river. This was 
 not an indication that she 
 doubted him. She followed 
 him unseen because she felt 
 that night that there were 
 elements in his conduct which 
 she did not in the least under- 
 stand. When he was gone, 
 she went back to fulfil her 
 part of the contract, and she 
 had a strength of purpose in 
 fulfilling it which did not 
 belong mainly to the obligation 
 of her promise. Something 
 in his look when he had come 
 in this evening, in his glance 
 as he bade her farewell, made 
 her eager to fulfil it. 
 
 ^53 
 
 I 
 
,/ 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 THE 
 
 All night, asleep or awake, 
 she was more or less haunted 
 with this new feeling for 
 Toyner — a feeling which did 
 not in her mind resemble love 
 or liking, which would have 
 been perhaps best translated 
 by the word "reverence," 
 but that was not a word 
 in Ann's vocabulary, not 
 even an idea in her mentah 
 horizon. 
 
 Our greatest gains begin to 
 be a fact in the soul before 
 we have any mental con- 
 ception of them ! 
 
 The next day Ann was up 
 early. She took her beer (it 
 was home-brewed and not of 
 great value) and deliberately 
 poured it out, bottle after 
 bottle, into a large puddle 
 in the front road. The men 
 who were passing early saw 
 her action, and she told 
 them that she had " turned 
 temp'rance." She washed the 
 bottles, and set them upside 
 down before the house to dry 
 where all the world might see 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 'I 
 I 
 
 them. The sign by which 
 she had advertised her beer 
 and its price had been nothing 
 but a sheet of brown paper 
 with letters painted in irre- 
 gular brush strokes. Ann 
 had plenty of paper. This 
 morning she laid a sheet 
 upon her table, and rapidly 
 painted thereon with her 
 brush such advertisements as 
 these : 
 
 Tea and Coffee^ 3 Cents a Cup. 
 
 Ginger Bread, Baked Beans, 
 
 Lemonade. 
 
 Cooking done to order at any hour 
 and in any style. 
 
 By the time this placard 
 was up, Christa had sauntered 
 out to smell the morning 
 air, and she looked at it 
 with what was for Christa 
 quite an exertion of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 She went in to where Ann 
 was scrubbing the tables. 
 Christa never scrubbed except 
 when it was necessary from 
 Ann's point of view that she 
 should, but she never inter- 
 
 ! M 
 
 n 
 

 I 
 
 
 Now she only 
 
 I suppose you 
 
 THE 
 
 fered either, 
 said: 
 
 " Ann ! " 
 
 ** I'm here 
 can see me.'* 
 
 " Yes ; but, Ann " 
 
 It was so unusual for Christa 
 to feel even a strong emotion 
 of surprise that she did not 
 know in the least how to 
 express it. 
 
 Ann stopped scrubbing. 
 She had never supposed that 
 Christa would yield easily 
 to all the terms of the con- 
 dition ; she had not suffi- 
 cient confidence in her to 
 explain the truth concerning 
 the secret compact. 
 
 " Look here, Christa, do 
 you know that Walker died 
 last night .? Now I'll tell 
 you what it is ; you needn't 
 think that the people who 
 are respectable but not religious 
 will have anything more to 
 do with us, even in the off- 
 hand way that they've had 
 to do with us before now. 
 Father's setded all that for 
 
 156 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 us. Now the only thing 
 we've got to do is to turn 
 religious. We're going to 
 be temp'rance, and never 
 touch a game of cards. 
 You're going to wear plain 
 black clothes and not dance 
 any more. It wouldn't be 
 respectable any way, seeing 
 they may catch father any 
 day, and the least we can 
 do is sort of to go into 
 mourning." 
 
 Christa stood bright and 
 beautiful as a child of the 
 morning, and heard the 
 sentence of this long night 
 passed upon her ; but instead 
 of looking plaintive, a curiously 
 hard look of necessary ac- 
 quiescence came about the 
 lines of her cherry lips. Ann 
 was startled by it ; she had 
 expected Christa to bemoan 
 herself, and in this look she 
 recognised that the younger 
 sister had an element of cha- 
 racter like her own, was 
 perhaps growing to be what 
 she had become. The quality 
 
 157 
 
 1 
 
 11 
 
H 
 
 THE 
 
 that she honestly admired in 
 herself appeared disgusting to 
 her in pretty Christa, yet she 
 went on to persuade and 
 explain ; it was necessary. 
 
 ** We can*t dance, Christa, 
 for no one would dance with 
 us ; we can't wear flowers in 
 our hats, for no one would 
 admire them. I suppose you 
 have the sense to see that ? 
 The men that come here are 
 a pretty easy-gouig rough lot, 
 but they draw a line some- 
 where. Now I've kept you 
 like a lady so far, and I'll go 
 on doing that to the end " 
 (This was Ann's paraphrase 
 for respectability) ; " so if yon 
 don't want to sit at home and 
 mope, we've got to go in for 
 being religious and go to 
 church and meetings. The 
 minister will come to see 
 us, and all that sort will take 
 to speaking to us, and I'll 
 get you into Sunday school. 
 There are several very good- 
 looking fellows that go there, 
 and there's a class of real big 
 
 158 
 
 (C 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ^d in 
 ig to 
 she 
 and 
 
 (rista, 
 Iwith 
 •s in 
 ^ould 
 
 girls taught byaYoung-Men's- 
 Christian - Association chap. 
 He'd come to see you, you 
 know, if you were in his 
 class." 
 
 Christa was perfectly con- 
 soled, perfectly satisfied ; she 
 even showed her sister some 
 of the animation which had 
 hitherto come to her only 
 when she was flirting with 
 men. 
 
 "Ann," she said earnestly, 
 '*you are very splendid. I 
 got up thinking there weren't 
 no good in living at all." 
 
 Ann eyed her sharply. Was 
 one set of actions the same 
 to Christa as another ^ and was 
 she content to forget all their 
 ov/n shame and all her father's 
 wretched plight if she could 
 only have a few pleasures for 
 herself? It was exactly the 
 passive state that she had de- 
 sired to evoke in Christa ; but 
 there are many spectres that 
 come to our call and then 
 appal us with their presence ! 
 
 Ann went on with her 
 
 . f 
 
 mi 
 
 ^S9 
 
K? 
 
 THE 
 
 
 il 
 
 work. She was not in the 
 habit of indulging herself in 
 moods or reveries ; still, within 
 her grew a silent disapproval 
 of Christa. She felt herself 
 superior to her. After a while 
 another thought came upon 
 her with unexpected force. 
 Christa's motive for taking to 
 the religious life was only self- 
 interest ; her own motive was 
 the same ; and was not that 
 the motive which she really 
 supposed hitherto to actuate 
 all religious people ? Had 
 she not, for instance, been fully 
 convinced that self-interest was 
 the sum and substance of Bart 
 Toyner's religion ? Now 
 between Bart Toyner and 
 Christa and herself she felt 
 that a great gulf was fixed. 
 
 Well, she did not know ; 
 she did not understand ; she 
 was not at all sure that she 
 wanted to understand anything 
 more about Bart Toyner and 
 all the complex considerations 
 about life which the thought 
 of him seemed to arouse in 
 1 60 
 
 i \ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 her. She felt that the best 
 way of ridding herself of un- 
 comfortable thoughts about 
 him was to be busy in {per- 
 forming all that he could 
 reasonably require at her 
 hands. It is just in the same 
 way that many people rid 
 themselves of thoughts about 
 God. 
 
 All that long day, while the 
 sunlight fell pink through the 
 haze, Ann worked at renova- 
 ting her own life and Christa's. 
 She took Christa and went to 
 some girls of their acquaintance, 
 and presented them with all 
 the feathers, furbelows, and 
 artificials which she and Christa 
 possessed. She cooked some 
 of the viands which she had 
 advertised for sale, and pre- 
 pared all her small stock of 
 kitchen utensils for the new 
 avocation. It was a long 
 hard day's work, and before 
 it was over the village was 
 ringing with the news of all 
 this change. The minister 
 had already called on Ann and 
 i6i M 
 
 Ufa 
 
THE 
 
 Christa, saying suitable things 
 concerning their father's terri- 
 ble crime and their own sad 
 position. When he was gone 
 Christa laughed. 
 
 162 
 
 I 
 
 gimmmm 
 
 
 Mtt 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Th e sweet-scented smoke 
 of the distant forest fires 
 had diffused itself all day in 
 the atmosphere more and more 
 palpably. It was not a gloomy 
 effect, and familiar to eyes 
 accustomed to the Canadian 
 August. All the sunbeams 
 were very pink, and they fell 
 flickering among the shadows 
 of the pear tree upon Mark- 
 ham's grey wooden house, upon 
 the path and the ragged green 
 in front. Ann had pleasant 
 associations with these pink 
 beams because they told of fine 
 weather. Smoke will not lie 
 thus in an atmosphere that is 
 molested with any currents of 
 wind that might bring cloud 
 or storm. On the whole Ann 
 had spent the day happily, for 
 fair weather has much to do 
 with happiness ; but when that 
 163 
 
 i 
 
 ttmjm 
 
I 
 
 
 
 ] 
 
 J 
 
 \ 
 
 THE 
 
 unusual flood of blood-red light 
 came at sunset, giving an un- 
 earthly look to a land which 
 was well enough accustomed 
 to bright sunsets of a more 
 ordinary sort, Ann's courage 
 and good humour failed her ; 
 she yielded to the common 
 influence of marvels and felt 
 afi*aid. 
 
 What had she done, and 
 what was she going to do ? 
 She was playing with religion ; 
 and religion, if it was nothing 
 more, was something which 
 had made Bart Toyner look 
 at her with such a strange 
 smile of selfless hope and 
 desire — hope that she would 
 be something diff^erent from 
 what she had been, desire that 
 the best should come to her 
 whatever was going to happen 
 to him. That was the ex- 
 planation of what had seemed 
 inexplicable in his look (she 
 felt glad to have worked it out 
 at last) ; and if anything so 
 strange as that were possible 
 in Bart, what was the force 
 164 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 h 
 
 ler 
 
 with which she was playing ? 
 Would some judgment befall 
 her ? 
 
 The evening closed in. 
 Christa went to bed to finish 
 a yellow-backed novel. As it 
 was the last she was to read 
 for a long time, she thought 
 she might as well enjoy it. 
 Ann sat alone in the outer 
 room. The night was very 
 still. Christa went to sleep, 
 but Ann continued to sit, 
 stitching at the very plain 
 garb that Christa was to don 
 on the morrow, not so much 
 because she needed to work as 
 because she felt no need of 
 sleep. The night being close 
 and warm, her window, a small 
 French casement, stood open. 
 At a late hour, when passers 
 upon the road were few, 
 arrested by some sound, she 
 knew not what, she lifted her 
 head and looked through the 
 open window intently, in the 
 same way as we lift our eyes 
 and look sometimes just 
 because another, a stranger 
 i6j 
 
 
 
^1 
 
 !• 
 
 THE 
 
 perhaps, has riveted his gaze 
 upon us. 
 
 A moment more, and Ann 
 saw some one come within 
 the beams of her own lamp 
 outside of the window ; the 
 figure crossed like a dark, 
 silent shadow, but Ann thought 
 she recognised Toyner. The 
 outline of the clothes that he 
 had worn when she had seen 
 him last just about this hour 
 on the previous night was 
 unconsciously impressed upon 
 her mind. A shudder of fear 
 came over her, and then she 
 was astonished at the fear ; 
 he might easily have done all 
 that she had given him to do 
 and returned by this time. 
 Yet why did he pass the 
 window in that ghostly fashion 
 and show no sign of coming 
 to the door ^ A moment or 
 two that she sat seemed beaten 
 out into the length and width 
 of minutes by the throbbing of 
 her nerves, usually so steady. 
 She determined o steel her- 
 self against discomfort. If 
 166 
 
 maatm 
 
 MPM 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ize 
 
 Toyner had done his work 
 and come home and did not 
 think it wise to visit heropenly, 
 what was there to alarm in 
 that ? Yet she remembered 
 that Toyner had spoken of 
 being away for some indefinite 
 length of time. She had not 
 understood why last night, 
 and now it seemed even more 
 hard to understand. 
 
 As she sewed she found 
 herself looking up moment 
 by moment at the window. It 
 was not long before she saw 
 the same figure there again, 
 close now, and in the full light. 
 Her hands dropped nerveless 
 upon her knee ; she sat gazing 
 with strained whitened face. 
 The outline of the clothes she 
 associated with the thought of 
 Toyner, but from under the 
 dark hat her father's face 
 looked at her. Not the face 
 of a man she thought, but the 
 face of a spirit, as white as if 
 it were lifeless, as haggard as 
 if it were dead, but with blazing 
 life in the eyeballs and a line 
 167 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 
lil 
 
 I 
 
 - 
 
 
 1" 
 
 
 L 
 
 ik 
 
 THE 
 
 like red fire round their rims. 
 In a moment it was gone 
 again. 
 
 Ann started up possessed 
 with the desire to prove the 
 ghostly visitant material ; pass- 
 ing through the door, she fled 
 outside with her lamp. What- 
 ever had been there had with- 
 drawn itself more quickly 
 than she had come to seek 
 it. 
 
 She felt convinced now that 
 her father was dead ; she fell 
 to imagining all the ways in 
 which the tragic end might 
 have come. No thought that 
 came to her was satisfactory. 
 What had Bart done ? Why 
 had his form seemed to her so 
 inextricably confused with the 
 form of her father at the 
 moment of the apparition? 
 The recognition of a man or 
 his garments, although the 
 result of observation, does not 
 usually carry with it any con- 
 sciousness of the details that 
 we have observed ; and she did 
 not know now what it was that 
 i68 
 
 
 .:. ..'Miiai/il'Sm 
 
IS. 
 
 le 
 
 id 
 le 
 is- 
 id 
 It- 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 had made her think of Toyner 
 so strongly. 
 
 The next morning, as the 
 day was beginning to wear on, 
 one of the Fentown men put 
 his head into Ann's door. 
 
 "Do you happen to know 
 where Toyner is? " he asked. 
 
 She gave a negative, only 
 to be obliged to repeat it to 
 several questions in quick 
 succession. 
 
 " Seen him this morning ? " 
 
 *' Seen him last night? " 
 
 " Happen to know where 
 he would likely be ? " 
 
 The growing feeling of 
 distress in Ann's mind made 
 the shake of her head more 
 and more emphatic. She was 
 of course an object of more 
 or less pity to every one at 
 that time, and the intruder 
 made an explanation iliat had 
 some tone of apology. 
 
 " Oh, well, I didn't know but 
 as you might have happened 
 to have seen him since he 
 came back. His boat's there 
 at the landing all right, but 
 169 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
THE • 
 
 his mother's not seen him up 
 to the house." 
 
 During the day Ann heard 
 the same tale in several different 
 forms. Toyner was one of 
 those quiet men not often in 
 request by his neighbours ; and 
 as he was known at present to 
 have reason possibly for hidden 
 movements in search of his 
 quarry, there was not that hue 
 and cry raised concerning the 
 presence of the boat and the 
 absence of the owner thatwould 
 have been aroused in the case of 
 some other ; still, the interest 
 in his whereabouts gradually 
 grew, and Ann heard the talk 
 about it. Within her own 
 heart an unexpressed terror 
 grew stronger and stronger. 
 It was founded upon the sense 
 of personal responsibility. She 
 alone knew the secret mission 
 upon which Toyner had left ; 
 she alone knew of the glimpse 
 of her father which she had 
 caught the night before, and 
 she doubted now whether she 
 had seen a spirit or visible 
 
 170 
 
 mAiiirrffffiifiitrTifiTif 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 man. What had happened in 
 the dark hour in which Toyner 
 and Mark ham had met, and 
 which of them had brought 
 back the boat ? The misery 
 of these questions grew to be 
 greater than she could endure ; 
 but to confide her distress to 
 any one was impossible. To 
 do so might not only be to 
 put her father's enemies upon 
 his track, but it would be to 
 confess Bart's unfaithfulness to 
 his public duty ; and in that 
 curious revolution of feeling 
 which so frequently comes 
 about in hearts where it is 
 least expected, Ann felt the 
 latter would be the more in- 
 tolerable woe of the two. 
 
 Then came another of those 
 strange unearthly sunsets. 
 Ann's mind was made up. 
 Inactivity she could endure 
 no longer. There was one 
 explanation that appeared to 
 her more reasonable than any 
 other; that was, that Bart had 
 wavered in his resolution to 
 relieve Markham, that the 
 171 
 
M 
 
 THE 
 
 latter had died upon the tree 
 where he was hiding, and that 
 Bart would not show himself 
 for the present where Ann 
 could see him. Ann did not 
 believe in this explanation; 
 but because of the apparition 
 which she thought she had 
 seen, because of the horrible 
 nature of the fear it entailed, 
 she determined that, come 
 what would, she would go to 
 that secret place which she 
 alone knew and find out if 
 her father had been taken 
 from it or if any trace re- 
 mained there to show what 
 had really happened. It was 
 when the sisters were again 
 alone for the night that she first 
 broke the silence of her fears. 
 
 ** Christa, father came to 
 the window last night, but 
 went away again before I could 
 catch him." 
 
 " Sure he would never show 
 his face in this place, Ann. 
 You mv.st have been dream- 
 mg! 
 
 " Well, I must try to find 
 172 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 him. I tell you what I'm going 
 to do. I've been along all 
 the boats, and there's not one 
 of th'^m I could take without 
 being heard except David 
 Brown's canoe that is tied 
 at the foot of his father's 
 field. I could get that, and I 
 expect to be back here long 
 before it's light. If any one 
 should come to the door 
 asking for me, you say, like 
 the other night, that I'm ill 
 and can't see them." 
 
 ** Yes," said Christa, without 
 exhibiting much interest. Ann 
 had been the deus ex machina 
 of the house since Christa' s 
 babyhood. It never occurred 
 to her that any power needed 
 to interfere on behalf of Ann, 
 
 "But if I shouldn't get 
 back by daylight, you'll have 
 to manage to say a word to 
 David Brown. Tell him that 
 I borrowed his canoe for a 
 very special purpose. If you 
 just say that, he'll have sense 
 not to make a fuss." 
 
 " Yes," said Christa sleepily. 
 
 173 
 
 
 ■j^ 
 
 ■--'-'^'•' ""^•- 
 
 - --■■^'" 
 
THE 
 
 f I 
 
 i) 
 
 '■ I 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The canoe did not answer to 
 Ann's one slim Indian paddle 
 so lightly as the boat she had 
 taken before had answered to 
 the oars. Kneeling upright 
 in the stern, she was obliged 
 to keep her body in perfect 
 balance. 
 
 The moon did not rise now 
 until late, but the smoke that 
 had for two days hung so still 
 and dim had been lifted on a 
 light breeze that came with 
 the darkness. The stars 
 were clear above, and Ann's 
 eyes were well accustomed to 
 the wood and stream. 
 
 Ah ! how long it seemed 
 before she came round the 
 bend of the river and down 
 to the blasted tree. She felt 
 a repulsion for the whole 
 death-like place to-night that 
 she had not felt before. She 
 
 174 
 
 r r 
 
 X 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 had been sure the other night of 
 meeting some one at the end 
 of her secret journey, and now 
 the best she could hope was 
 that the place would be empty; 
 and even if it were empty, 
 perhaps, for all she knew, one 
 of the men for whom she was 
 seeking might be lying dead 
 in the water beneath. Certainly 
 the inexplicable appearance of 
 her father the night before 
 had shaken her nerves. Ann 
 was doing a braver thing than 
 she had ever done in her life, 
 because she was a prey to 
 terror. Lonely as the desolate 
 Ah we wee was, to turn from 
 it into the windings of the 
 secret opening seemed like 
 leaving the world behind and 
 going alone into a region of 
 death. There was no sound 
 but the splash of paddle, 
 the ripple of th« still water 
 under the canoe, the occasional 
 voice of a frog fromthe swampy 
 edges of the lake, and the 
 shrill murmur of crickets from 
 the dry fields beyond. 
 
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 (716) 872-4S03 
 
 
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THE 
 
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 When Ann came near she 
 saw the bouiid figure reclining 
 in the arms of the fallen tree. 
 Then she believed that her 
 worst fear had been true — that 
 Bart had been unfaithful, and 
 that her father had died in this 
 wretched place. He must be 
 dead because she had seen his 
 spirit ! 
 
 She came nearer. He had 
 not died of starvation ; the 
 bag of food which she had 
 hung upon the branch hung 
 there yet. She set the canoe 
 close against the tree, and, 
 holding by the tree, raised 
 herself in it. She had to be 
 very careful lest the canoe 
 should tip under her even 
 while she held by the tree. 
 Then she put forth a brave 
 hand, and laid it upon the 
 breast of the unconscious man. 
 
 He was not dead. The 
 heart was beating, though not 
 strongly ; the body was warm. 
 
 " Father, father." She shook 
 him gently. 
 
 The answer was a groan, 
 176 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ' she 
 ining 
 
 tree. 
 t her 
 -that 
 
 and 
 n this 
 ist be 
 ;n his 
 
 I had 
 ; the 
 i had 
 hung 
 canoe 
 
 and, 
 raised 
 to be 
 canoe 
 
 even 
 
 £ tree. 
 
 brave 
 
 )n the 
 
 13 man. 
 
 The 
 
 gh not 
 
 warm. 
 
 i shook 
 
 groan, 
 
 very feeble. It told her at 
 once that the man before her 
 was stricken with some 
 physical ill that made him 
 incapable of responding to her. 
 And now what was she to 
 do ? It was necessary by some 
 means to get her father into 
 the canoe. To that she did 
 not give a second thought, but 
 while he still lived it seemed 
 to her monstrous to take him 
 either back to Fentown Falls 
 or down to The Mills. Her 
 horror of prison and of judg- 
 ment for him had grown to 
 be wholly morbid and un- 
 reasonable, just because his 
 terror of it had been so 
 extreme. Only one course 
 remained. She had the chart 
 that David Brown had given 
 her. He had told her that 
 at that northern edge of 
 the swamp, which could be 
 reached by the way he had 
 marked out, a small farmhouse 
 stood. Possibly the people 
 in this house might not yet 
 have heard of Markham the 
 
 177 
 
 N 
 

 f 
 
 il 
 
 I ■■ '"• 
 
 I 
 
 r 
 
 THE 
 
 m rderer ; or possibly, if they 
 had heard, they might be won 
 for pity's sake to let him 
 regain strength there and go 
 in peace. It was her only 
 chance. The moon was rising 
 now, and she would find the 
 way. She felt strength to do 
 anything when she had realised 
 that the heart beneath her 
 hand was still beating. 
 
 Ann moved the canoe under 
 the fallen log, and moving 
 down it upon her knees, she 
 took the rope from the prow, 
 secured it round the log from 
 which the sick man must 
 descend, and fastened it again 
 to the other end of the boat. 
 This at least was a guarantee 
 that they could not all sink 
 together. Even yet the 
 danger of upsetting the canoe 
 sideways was very great. 
 It was only necessity that 
 enabled her to accomplish her 
 task. 
 
 " Father, rouse yourself a 
 little." She took Markham's 
 old felt hat, upon which the 
 
 178 
 
r 
 
 must 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 insensible head was lying, and 
 set it warmly over his brow. 
 She unfastened the bands that 
 tied his body to the log. She 
 had not come without a small 
 phial of the rum that was 
 always necessary for her father, 
 in the hope that she might 
 find him alive. She soaked 
 some morsels of bread in this, 
 and put it in the mouth of 
 the man over whom she was 
 working. It was very dark; 
 the only marvel was, not that 
 she did not recognise Toyner, 
 but that she and he were not 
 both engulfed in the black 
 flood beneath them in the 
 struggle which she made to 
 take him in the canoe. 
 
 Twice that day Toyner had 
 stirred and become conscious; 
 but consciousness, except that 
 of confused dreams, had again 
 deserted him. The lack of 
 food, if it had preserved him 
 from fever, had caused the 
 utmost weakness of all his 
 bodily powers ; yet when the 
 small amount of bread and 
 179 
 

 '■ 
 
 THE 
 
 rum which he could swallow 
 gave him a little strength, he 
 was rouseH- not to the extent 
 of knoA^ing who he was or 
 where, but enough to move 
 his muscles, although feebly, 
 under direction. After a long 
 time she had him safely in 
 the bottom of the canoe, his 
 head lying upon her jacket 
 which she had folded for a 
 pillow. At first, as she began 
 to paddle the canoe forward, 
 he groaned again and again, 
 but by degrees the reaction 
 of weakness after exertion 
 made him lapse into his former 
 state that seemed like sleep. 
 
 Ann had lost no^^ all her 
 fears of unknown and unseen 
 dangers. All that she feared 
 was the loss of her way, or 
 the upsetting of her boat. 
 The strength that she put 
 into the strokes of her paddle 
 was marvellous. She had just 
 a mile to go before she came 
 to another place where a stretch 
 of still water opened through 
 the trees. There were several 
 
 i8o 
 
 H 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 of these blind channels open- 
 ing off the bed of the Ahwewee. 
 They were the terror of those 
 who were travelling in boats, for 
 they were easily mistaken for 
 the river itself, and they led 
 to nothing but impenetrable 
 marsh. From this particular 
 inlet David Brown had dis- 
 covered a passage to the land, 
 and Ann pursued the new un- 
 tried way boldly. Somewhere 
 farther on David had told her 
 a little creek flowed in where 
 the eye could not discern any 
 wider opening than was con- 
 stantly the case between the 
 drowned trees. Its effect upon 
 the current of the water was 
 said to be so slight that the 
 only way to discover where it 
 ran was by throwing some 
 light particles upon the water 
 and watching to see whether 
 they drifted outwards from the 
 wood steadily. She turned 
 the boat gently against a 
 broken stump from which she 
 could take a decayingfragment. 
 An hour passed. She wearily 
 
 j8i 
 

 1; i 
 
 THE 
 
 crossed the water to and fro, 
 casting out her chips of punk, 
 straining her eyes to see their 
 motion in the moonlight. The 
 breeze that had moved the 
 smoke had gone again. Above 
 the moon rode through white 
 fleecy clouds. The water and 
 air lay still and warm, inter- 
 penetrated with the white light. 
 The trees, without leaf or 
 twigs, cast no shadow with the 
 moon in the zenith. 
 
 The patient experimenting 
 with the chips was a terrible 
 ordeal to Ann. The man 
 whom she supposed to be her 
 father lay almost the whole 
 length of the canoe so close to 
 her, and yet she could not pass 
 his outstretched feet to give 
 him food or stimulant. At 
 last, at last, to her great joy, she 
 found the place where the chips 
 floated outward with steady 
 motion. She then pushed 
 her canoe in among the trees, 
 thankful to know that it, at 
 least, had been there before, 
 that there would be no pass 
 182 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 too narrow for it. The canoe 
 itself was almost like a living 
 creature to her by this time. 
 Like an intelligent companion 
 in the search, it responded 
 with gentle motion to her 
 slightest touch. 
 
 It seemed to Ann that the 
 light of the moon was now 
 growing very strong and clear. 
 Surely no moon had ever be- 
 fore become so bright! Ann 
 looked about her, almost for a 
 moment dreading some super- 
 natural thing, and th^n she 
 realised that the night was 
 gone, that pale dawn was 
 actually smiling upon her. It 
 gave her a strange sense of 
 lightheartedness. Her heart 
 warmed with love to the sight 
 of the purple tint in the eastern 
 sky, that bluish purple which 
 precedes the yellow sunrise. 
 On either side of her boat now 
 the water was so shallow that 
 sedge and rushes rose above it. 
 
 The herons flapped across her 
 path to their morning fishing. 
 
 The creek still made a nar- 
 
 183 
 
 ' 
 
li: 
 
 THE 
 
 row channel for the canoe. 
 Pretty soon its current flowed 
 between wild undulating tracts 
 of bright green moss in which 
 the trees still stood dead, but 
 bark and lichen now adhered 
 to their trunks, and a few 
 more strokes brought her to 
 the fringes of young spruce 
 and balsam that grew upon 
 the drier knolls. She smelt 
 living trees, dry woods and 
 pastures in front. Then a 
 turn of the narrow cr-^ek, and 
 she saw a log-house standing 
 not twenty paces from the 
 stream. Above and around it 
 maples and elms held out green 
 branches, and there was some 
 sort of a clearing farther on. 
 
 Ann felt exultant in her 
 triumph. She had brought 
 her boat to a place of safety. 
 She seemed to gather life and 
 strength from the sun ; although 
 it still lay below the blue 
 horizon of lake and forest 
 which she had left behind 
 her, the sky above was a gulf 
 of sunshine. 
 
 184 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 She stepped out of the boat 
 and pushed away the hat to 
 look in her father's face. She 
 saw now who it was that she 
 had rescued. Toyner stirred 
 a little when she touched him, 
 and opened his eyes, the same 
 grave grey eyes with which he 
 had looked at her when he 
 bade her good-bye. There 
 was no fever in them, and, as 
 it seemed to her, no lack of 
 sense and thought. Yet he 
 only looked at her gravely, 
 and then seemed to sleep 
 again. 
 
 The girl sprang upright 
 upon the bank and wrung her 
 hands together. It came to 
 her with sudden clearness what 
 had been done. Had Toyner 
 told his tale, she could hardly 
 have known it more clearly. 
 Her father had tried to mur- 
 der hart ; her father had tied 
 him in his own place ; it was 
 her father who had escaped 
 alone with the boat. It was 
 he himself, and no apparition, 
 who had peered in upon her 
 
 185 
 
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 'i'lriiWii'MtiMWiliii 
 
THE 
 
 i| 
 
 : 
 
 , I 
 
 III 
 
 through the window. She 
 was wrought up into a strong 
 glow of indignation against the 
 baseness that would turn upon 
 a deliverer, against the cruelty 
 of the revenge taken. No 
 wonder that miserable father 
 had not dared to enter her 
 house again or to seek further 
 succour from her ! All her 
 pity, all the strength of her 
 generosity, went out to the 
 man who had ventured so 
 much on his behalf and been 
 betrayed. That unspoken 
 reverence for Toyner, a 
 sense of the contrast between 
 him and her father and the 
 other men whom she knew, 
 which had been growing upon 
 her, now culminated in an 
 impulse of devotion. A new 
 faculty opened within her 
 nature, a new mine of wealth. 
 The thin white-faced man 
 that lay half dead in the 
 bottom of the canoe perhaps 
 experienced some reviving in- 
 fluence from this new energy 
 of love that had transformed 
 i86 
 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 the woman who stood near 
 him, for he opened his eyes 
 again and saw her, this time 
 quite distinctly, standing look- 
 ing down upon him. There 
 was tenderness in her eyes, 
 and her sunbrowned face was 
 all aglow with a flush that 
 was brighter than the flush of 
 physical exercise. About her 
 bending figure grew what 
 seemed to Bart's half-dazzled 
 sense the flowers of paradise, 
 for wild sunflowers and sheafs 
 of purple eupatorium brushed 
 her arms, standing in high 
 phalanx by the edge of the 
 creek. Bart smiled as he 
 looked, but he had no thoughts, 
 and all that he felt was summed 
 up in a word that he uttered 
 gently : 
 
 " Ann ! " 
 
 She knelt down at once. 
 "What is it, Bart.?" and 
 again : " What were you try- 
 ing to say ? " 
 
 It is probable that her words 
 did not reach him at all. He 
 was only half-way back from 
 
 187 
 
THE 
 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 the region of his vision ; but 
 he opened his eyes and looked 
 at her again. 
 
 The sun rose, and a level 
 golden beam struck through 
 between the trunks of the 
 trees, touching the flowers and 
 branches here and there with 
 moving lights, and giving all 
 the air a brighter, mellower 
 tint. There was something 
 that Bart did feel a desire to 
 say — a great thought that ?,t 
 another time he might have 
 tried in a multitude of words 
 to have expressed and failed. 
 He saw Ann, whom he loved, 
 and the paradise about her ; 
 he wanted to bring the new 
 knowledge that had come to 
 him in the light of his vision 
 to bear upon her who belonged 
 now to the region of outward 
 not of inward sight and yet 
 was part of what must always 
 be to him everlasting reality. 
 
 ** What were you going to 
 say, Bart .? " she asked a^ain 
 tenderly. 
 
 And again he summed up 
 
 i88 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 all that he thought and felt 
 in one word : 
 
 " God." 
 
 "Yes, Bart/' she said, with 
 some sudden intuitive sense of 
 agreement. 
 
 Then, seeming to be satis- 
 fied, he closed his eyes and 
 went back into the state of 
 drowsiness. 
 
 189 
 
THE 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ann went up to the house. 
 It was a great relief to her to 
 remember that the man for 
 whom she was going to ask 
 help was no criminal. She 
 could hold up her head and 
 speak boldly. 
 
 Another minute and she 
 began to look curiously to see 
 how long the grass and weeds 
 had grown before the door. 
 It was som months since 
 David Brown had been here. 
 The doubt which had entered 
 Ann's mind grew swiftly. 
 She knocked loudly upon the 
 door and upon the wooden 
 shutters of the windows. The 
 knocks echoed through empty 
 rooms. 
 
 She had no hesitation in 
 house-breaking. In a shed 
 at the back she found a broken 
 spade which formed a suffi- 
 
 190 
 
 ^ 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ciently strong and sharp lever 
 for her purpose. She pried 
 open a shutter and climbed 
 in. She found only such 
 furniture as was necessary for 
 a temporary abode. A small 
 iron stove, a few utensils or 
 tin, a huge sack which had 
 been used for a straw bed, 
 and a few articles of wooden 
 furniture, were all that was 
 to be seen. 
 
 Upon the canvas sack she 
 seized eagerly. Bart might 
 be dying, or he might be re- 
 covering from some injury ; 
 in either case she had only 
 one desire, and that was to 
 procure for him the necessary 
 comforts. Having no access 
 to hay or straw, she began 
 rapidly to gather the bracken 
 which was standing two and 
 three feet high in great quan- 
 tities wherever the ground 
 was dry under the trees. She 
 worked with a nervous strength 
 that was extraordinary, even 
 to herself, after the toilsome 
 night. When she had filled 
 191 
 
 m 
 
 MMki 
 
 ^mtMM 
 
 ^mttnimim^mm^tm 
 
w 
 
 THE 
 
 the sack, she put it upon the 
 floor of the lower room and 
 went back to the canoe. She 
 saw that Bart had rousea 
 himself and was sitting up. 
 He was even holding on to 
 the rushes with his hand — an 
 act which she thought showed 
 the dreamy state of his mind, 
 for she did not notice that 
 the rope had come undone. 
 She helped Bart out of the 
 canoe, putting her arm strongly 
 round him so that he was 
 able to walk. She saw that 
 he had not his mind yet ; he 
 said no word about the help 
 she gave him ; he walked as 
 a sleeping man might walk. 
 When she laid him down 
 upon the bed of bracken and 
 arranged his head upon the 
 thicker part which she had 
 heaped for a pillow, he seemed 
 to her to fall asleep almost at 
 once ; and yet, for fear that 
 his strangej condition was not 
 sleep, she hastily opened the 
 bag of food and the fiask^^of 
 rum. 
 
 192 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 . She stripped the twigs from 
 a tiny spruce tree, piling them 
 inside the old stove. Wlien 
 they had cracked and blazed 
 with a fierce, sudden heat, Ann 
 could only break bread-crumbs 
 into a cupful of boiling water 
 and put a few drops of rum 
 in it. She woke Bart and 
 fed him as she might have 
 fed a baby. When he lay 
 down again exhausted, with 
 that strange moan which he 
 always gave when he first put 
 back his head, she had the 
 comfort of believing that a 
 better colour came to his 
 cheek than before. She 
 resolved that if he rested 
 quietly for a few hours and 
 appeared better after the next 
 food she gave him, she would 
 think it safe to cushion the 
 canoe with bracken and take 
 him home. This thought 
 suggested to her to moor the 
 canoe. 
 
 She went down to the creek 
 again, but it was too late. 
 The water running gently and 
 193 o 
 
 jj.ii i iliiji|!i 
 
 ULJlLHiJMlH i 
 
mm 
 
 «, 
 
 THE 
 
 steadily had done its work, 
 taken the canoe out from 
 among the rushes, and floated 
 it down between the mosses 
 of the swamp. Making her 
 feet bare, she sprang from one 
 clump of fern root to another, 
 sometimes missing her footing 
 and striking to her knees 
 through the green moss that 
 let her feet easily break into 
 the black wet earth. In a 
 few minutes she could see the 
 canoe. It had drifted just 
 beyond the swamp, where all 
 the ground was lying under 
 some feet of water ; but there 
 a tree had turned its course 
 out of the current of the creek, 
 so that it was now sidling 
 against two ash trees, steady 
 as if at anchor. So few feet 
 as it was from her, Ann saw at 
 a glance that to reach it was 
 quite impossible. Realising 
 the helplessness of her position 
 without this canoe, she might 
 have been ready to brave the 
 dangers of a struggle in deep 
 water to obtain it, but the 
 194 
 
 ii 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 danger was that of sinking in 
 bottomless mud. The canoe 
 was wholly beyond her reach. 
 Retracing her steps, she washed 
 her feet in the running creek, 
 and, as she put on her shoes, 
 sitting upon the grassy bank 
 in the morning sunlight, she 
 felt drowsily as if she must 
 rest there for a few minutes. 
 She let her head fall upon the 
 arm she had outstretched on 
 the warm sod. 
 
 When she stirred again she 
 had that curious feeling of 
 inexplicable lapse of time that 
 comes to us after unexpected 
 and profound slumber. The 
 sun had already passed the 
 zenith ; the tone in the voices 
 of the crickets, the whole 
 colouring of earth and sky, 
 told her, before she had made 
 any exact observation of the 
 shadows, that it was afternoon. 
 
 She prepared more food for 
 the sick man. When she had 
 fed him and put him to rest 
 again, she went out to discover 
 what means of egress by land 
 
 • iB||gj)|i|lli|iiir)jii>i ri MinjuiiMiii 1 
 
THE 
 
 was to be found from this 
 lonely dwelling. She followed 
 the faint trace of wheel-ruts 
 over the grass, which for a 
 short distance ran through 
 undergrowth of fir and weeds. 
 She came out upon a cleared 
 space of some acres, from 
 which a fine crop of hay had 
 clearly been taken, apparently 
 about a month before. Who- 
 ever had mowed the hay had 
 evidently been engaged also 
 in a further clearing of the 
 land beyond, and there was a 
 small patch where tomatoes 
 and pea vines lay neglected 
 in the sun; the peas had 
 been gathered weeks before, 
 but the tomatoes, later in 
 ripening, hung there turn- 
 ing rich and red. Ann went 
 on across the cleared space. 
 Following the track, she came 
 to a thick bit of bush beyond, 
 where a long cutting had been 
 made, just wide enough for a 
 cart to pass through. 
 
 There was no other way 
 out; Ann must walk through 
 196 
 
 rvwrj(;2-«».-' 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 this long green passage. No 
 knight in a fairy tale ever 
 entered path that looked more 
 remote from the world's 
 thoroughfares. When she 
 had walked a mile she came to 
 an opening where the ground 
 dipped all round to a bottom 
 which had evidently at some 
 time held water, for the flame- 
 weed that grew thick upon it 
 stood even, the tops of its 
 magenta flowers as level as a 
 lake — it was, in fact, a lake of 
 faded crimson lying between 
 shores of luxuriant green. 
 The cart-ruts went right down 
 into the flame-flowers, and she 
 thought she could descry 
 where they rose from them 
 on the other side. Evidently 
 the blossoming had taken 
 place since the last cart had 
 passed over, and no doubt 
 many miles intervened between 
 this and the next dwelling- 
 house. Nothing but the 
 thought of necessities that 
 might arise for help on Bart's 
 account made her make the 
 197 
 
THE 
 
 toilsome passage, knee-deep 
 among the flowers, to see 
 whether, beyond that, the 
 road was passable ; but she 
 only found that it was not 
 fit for walkers except at a 
 time of greater drought than 
 the present. The swamp 
 crept round in a ring, so that 
 she discovered herself to be 
 upon what was actually an 
 island. Ann turned back, 
 realising that she was a 
 prisoner. 
 
 On her way home again 
 she gathered b!ood-red toma- 
 toes ; and finding a wild apple 
 tree, she added its green fruit 
 to what she already held 
 gathered in the skirt of her 
 gown ; starvation at least was 
 not a near enemy. 
 
 She had made her investiga- 
 tion calmly, and with a light 
 heart ; she felt sure that Bart 
 had grown better and stronger 
 during the day, and that was 
 all that she cared about. She 
 never paused to ask herself 
 why his recovery was not 
 198 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 merely a humane interest but 
 such a satisfying joy. The 
 knowledge of her present 
 remoteness from all distresses 
 of her life as a daughter and 
 sister came to her with a 
 wonderful sense of rest, and 
 opened her mind to the sweet 
 influences of the summer night 
 and its stars as that mind had 
 never been opened before. 
 
 She cooked the apples and 
 tomatoes, making quite a good 
 meal for herself. Then she 
 roused Bart, and gave him part 
 of the cooked fruit. 
 
 199 
 
 ■■■I 
 
w 
 
 THE 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The darkness closed in about 
 eight o'clock. Ann sat on the 
 doorstep watching the lights 
 in the sky shine out one by 
 one. Last night had been 
 the only night which had ever 
 possessed terrors for her, and 
 now that she believed her 
 father to be still alive she 
 thought no longer with any 
 horor of his apparition. She 
 wondered where he was wan- 
 dering, but her heart hardened 
 towards him. She rested and 
 dosed by turns upon the door- 
 step until about midnight. 
 Then in the darkness she heard 
 a voice from the bracken 
 couch that assured her that 
 Bart's mind had come back to 
 him again. 
 
 "Who is there.?" he 
 asked. 
 
 *'I am going to give you 
 
 200 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 he 
 
 something to eat," she said, 
 letting her voice speak her 
 name. 
 
 " Is it very dark ? " he 
 asked, " or am I blind ? '* 
 
 *' You can see right enough, 
 Bart," she said gently ; *' you 
 can watch me kindle the fire." 
 
 She left the door of the 
 stove open while the spruce 
 twigs were crackling, and in 
 the red, uncertain, dancing 
 light he caught glimpses of 
 the room in which he was, 
 and of her figure, but the 
 fire died down very quickly 
 again. 
 
 " I was thinking, Ann," he 
 said slowly, " that it was a 
 pity for Christa to be kept 
 from dancing. She is young 
 and light on her feet. God 
 must have made her to 
 dance.** 
 
 " Christa's well enough 
 without it," said Ann, a little 
 shortly. 
 
 She thought more coldly of 
 Christa since she had come up 
 to a higher level herself. 
 
 20 1 
 
THE 
 
 (( 
 
 i 
 
 Well, I only meant about 
 Christa that I think I made a 
 mistake," said Bart slowly. 
 
 " How a mistake ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 It was a very hard question 
 to answer. A moment before 
 and he thought he had seen 
 what the mistake was and 
 how to speak, but when he 
 tried, all that manifold difficulty 
 of applying that which is 
 eternal to that which is tem- 
 poral came between liJs thought 
 and its expression. 
 
 He could not know clearly 
 wherein his difficulty lay ; no 
 one had taught him about the 
 Pantheism which obliterates 
 moral distinctions, or told him 
 of the subjective ideal which 
 sweeps aside material delight. 
 He only felt after the realities 
 expressed by these phrases, 
 and dimly perceived that truth 
 lies midway between them, and 
 that truth is the mind of God, 
 and can only be lived, not 
 spoken. For a while he lay 
 there in the darkness, trying 
 202 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 to think how he could tell 
 Ann that to his eyes all things 
 had become new ; after a 
 little while he did try to tell 
 her, and although the words 
 were lame, and apparently 
 contradictory to much that 
 they both knew was also true, 
 still some small measure ot 
 his meaning passed into her 
 mind. 
 
 " God is difFerent from what 
 I ever thought," he said ; 
 " He isn't in some things and 
 not in others ; it's wicked to 
 live so as to make people 
 think that, for they think 
 they can get outside of Him, 
 and then they don't mind 
 Him at all." 
 
 " How do you know it .? " 
 she asked curiously. 
 
 "I saw it. Perhaps God 
 showed me because I was so 
 hard up. It's God's truth, 
 Ann, that I am saying." 
 
 The room was quite dark 
 
 again now ; the chirping of 
 
 the crickets outside thrilled 
 
 through and through it, as if 
 
 203 
 
 y^ 
 
THE 
 
 there were no walls there but 
 only the darkness and the 
 chirping. Ann sat upon a 
 wooden chair by the stove. 
 
 She considered for a minute, 
 and then she said, with the 
 first touch of repentance in 
 her heart : ** Well, I reckon 
 God ain't in me, any way. 
 There isn't much of God in 
 me that I can see." 
 
 " I'll tell you how it is if I 
 can." Toyners voice had a 
 strange rest and calm in it. 
 He spoke as a man who 
 looked at some inward c^^urce 
 of peace, trying to describe it. 
 " Supposing you had a child, 
 you wouldn't care anything 
 about him at all if you could 
 just work him by wires so 
 that he couldn't do anything 
 but just what you liked ; and 
 yet the more you cared about 
 him, the more it would hurt 
 you dreadfully if he didn't do 
 the things that you knew 
 were good for him, and love 
 you and talk to you too. Well 
 now, suppose one day, when 
 
 204 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 he was a little fellow, say, he 
 wanted to touch something 
 hot, and you told him not to. 
 Well, if he gave it up, you*d 
 make it easier for him to be 
 good next time ; but suppose 
 he went on determined to 
 have his own way, can't you 
 think of yourself taking hold 
 of his hand and just helping 
 him to reach up and touch 
 the hot thing ? I tell you, if 
 you did that it would mean 
 that you cared a great sight 
 more about him than if you 
 just slapped him and put it 
 out of his reach ; and yet, you 
 see, you'd be helping him to 
 do the wrong thing just because 
 you wanted to take the naughti- 
 ness out of his heart, not 
 because you were a devil that 
 wanted him to be naughty. 
 Well, you see, between us 
 and our children" (Toynerwas 
 talking as men do who get 
 hold of truth, not as an in- 
 dividual, but as mankind) " it's 
 not the same as between God 
 and us. They have our life 
 
 205 
 
 itbttmrnmrmmi^i^^s 
 
 JL 
 
THE 
 
 (i 
 
 in them, but they're outside 
 us and we're outside them, 
 and so we get into the way, 
 when we want them to be 
 good, of giving them a punish- 
 ment that's outside the harm 
 they've done, and trying to 
 put the harm they are going 
 to do outside of their reach ; 
 and when they do the right 
 thing, half the time we don't 
 help them to do it again. But 
 that isn't God's way. Nothing 
 is ever outside of Him ; 
 and what happens after we 
 have done a thing is just what 
 must happen, nothing more 
 and nothing less, so that we 
 can never hope to escape the 
 good or the evil of what we 
 have done ; for the way things 
 must happen is just God's 
 character that never changes. 
 You see the reason we can 
 choose between right and 
 wrong when a tree can't, or a 
 beast, is just because God's 
 power of choice is in us and 
 not in them. So we use His 
 power, and when we use it 
 206 
 
ZEIT GEIST 
 
 and 
 
 and 
 iHis 
 it 
 
 right and think about pleasing 
 Him — for, you see, we know 
 He can be pleased, for our 
 minds are just bits of His 
 mind (as far as we know any- 
 thing about Him, but of course 
 we only know a very little) — 
 He puts a tremendous lot of 
 strength into us, so that we can 
 go on doing right next time. 
 Of course it's a low sort of 
 right when we don't think about 
 Him, for that's the most of what 
 He wants us to do ; but I tell 
 you " (a little personal fire and 
 energy here broke the calm of 
 the recital), " I tell you, when I 
 do look up to God and say, 
 * Now I am going to do this 
 for Tour sake and because 
 Tou are in me and will do it^ 
 I tell you, there's tremendous 
 power given us. I'hat^s the 
 law that makes the value of 
 religion ; I know it by the way 
 I gave up drinking. But 
 now, look here ; most of the 
 time we don't use God's will, 
 that He lends us, to do what's 
 right ; well, then He doesn't 
 207 
 
 mM 
 
 mitt 
 
THE 
 
 
 r : 
 
 slap us and put the harm out 
 of our reach. He does just 
 what the mother does when 
 she takes the child's hand and 
 puts it against the hot thing, 
 and the burn hurts her as 
 much as it hurts the child ; 
 but He is not weak like we 
 are to do it only once in a 
 way. I tell you, Ann, every 
 time you do a wrong thing 
 God is with you ; that is what 
 I saw when I was hard up 
 and God showed me how 
 things really were. Now, 
 look here, there isn't any end 
 to it that we can see here; 
 it's an awful lot of help we 
 get to do the wrong thing if 
 that's the thing we choose to 
 do. It gets easier and easier, 
 and at first there's a lot of 
 pleasure to it, but by-and-by it 
 gets more and more dreadful, 
 and then comes death, and 
 that's the end here. But God 
 does not change because we 
 die, and wherever we go He 
 is with us and gives us energy 
 to do just what we choose to 
 208 
 
 n 
 
 r'^ : 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 we 
 
 do. It's hell before we die 
 when we live that way, and 
 it's hell after, for ages and 
 ages and worlds and worlds 
 perhaps, just until the hell-fire 
 of sin has burned the wrong 
 way of choosing out of us. 
 But remember, God never 
 leaves us whatever we do ; 
 there's nothing we feel that 
 He doesn't feel with us ; we 
 must all come in the end to 
 being like Himself, and there's 
 always open the short simple 
 way of choosing His help to 
 do right, instead of the long, 
 long way through hell. But 
 I tell you, Ann, whether you're 
 good or whether you're 
 wicked, God is in you and 
 you are in Him. If He left 
 you, you would neither be 
 good nor wicked, you would 
 stop being ; but He loves you 
 in a bigger, closer way than 
 you can think of loving any- 
 body ; and if you choose to go 
 round the longest way you 
 can, through the hell-fire of 
 sin on earth and all the other 
 209 p 
 
'f ' 
 
 THE 
 
 < i 
 i I 
 
 ■jiif 
 
 W 
 
 \ 
 
 II 
 
 
 worlds, He will suffer it all 
 with you, and bring you in the 
 end to be like Himself." 
 
 The calm voice was sus- 
 tained in physical strength by 
 the strength of the new 
 faith. 
 
 Ann's reply followed on the 
 track of thoughts that had 
 occurred to her. ** Well now, 
 there's that awful low girl, 
 Nelly Bowes. She's drunk 
 all the time, and she's got 
 an awful disease. She's as 
 bad as bad can be, and so is 
 the man she lives with ; and 
 that little child of hers was 
 born a hard-minded, sickly 
 little beast." Her words had 
 a touch of triumphant oppo- 
 sition as she brought them 
 out slowly. " It's a mean, 
 horrid shame for the child to 
 be born like that. It wasn't 
 its fault. Do you mean to 
 say God is with them .? " 
 
 '* It's a long sight easier to be- 
 lieve that than that He just let 
 them go to the devil ! I tell 
 you it's an awful wicked thing 
 
 2IO. 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 it all 
 in the 
 
 sus- 
 
 th by 
 
 new 
 
 )n the 
 t had 
 I now, 
 
 drunk 
 s^ got 
 le's as 
 I so is 
 
 ; and 
 rs was 
 
 sickly 
 is had 
 
 oppo- 
 them 
 
 mean, 
 hild to 
 
 wasn't 
 
 ;an to 
 
 tobe- 
 
 iust let 
 
 I tell 
 
 thing 
 
 to teach people that God can 
 save them and doesn't. God 
 is saving those two and the 
 child just by the hell they've 
 brought on themselves and 
 it; and He's in hell with 
 them, and He'll bring them 
 out to something grander than 
 we can think about. They 
 could come to it without 
 giving Him all that agony 
 and themselves too ; but if they 
 won't, He'll go through it 
 with them rather than turn 
 them into puppets that He 
 could pull by wires. And 
 as to the child, I can't see it 
 quite clear ; but I see this 
 much that I know is true : 
 it's God's character to have 
 things so that a good man 
 has a child with a nice clean 
 soul, and it's just by the same 
 way of things that the other 
 happens too. It's the working 
 out of the bad man's salvation 
 to see his child worse than 
 himself, and it's the working 
 out of the child's salvation to 
 have his bad soul in a bad 
 
 211 
 
n ^- 
 
 THE 
 
 body. Look you, can't you 
 think that in the ages after 
 death the saving of the soul 
 of that child may be the 
 one thing to make that r..an 
 and woman divine ? They'll 
 never, never get rid of their 
 child, and the child will come 
 quicker to the light through 
 the blackness he is born to 
 than if, having the bad soul 
 that he has, God was to set 
 him in heaven. But, look 
 you, Ann, there isn't a day 
 or an hour that God is not 
 asking them to choose the 
 better and the quicker way, 
 and there isn't a day or an 
 hour that He isn't asking you 
 and me and every one else in 
 the world to do as He does so 
 as to help them to choose it, 
 and live out the sufferings of 
 their life with them till they 
 do." 
 
 Ann sat quite stilh; she had 
 a feeling that if she moved 
 to make any other sound, 
 however slight, than that of 
 speech some spell would be 
 
 212 
 
 M" 
 
' 
 
 you 
 
 after 
 
 soul 
 
 the 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 broken. In the darkness Bart 
 had awakened out of the 
 stupor of his injury ; anc. 
 although Ann could not have 
 expressed it, she felt that his 
 voice came like the speech of 
 a soul that is not a part of 
 the things we see and touch. 
 It was so strange to her that 
 he did not ask her where he 
 was. For a few minutes 
 more at least she did not 
 want to bring the least rustle 
 of material surroundings into 
 their talk. She was still 
 incredulous ; it is only a 
 very weak mind that does 
 not take time to grow into a 
 new point of view. 
 
 " Bart, was God with father 
 when he tried to kill you and 
 tied you to the tree ^ " 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 " You can't think of God 
 being less than something else. 
 If God was not in your father, 
 then space is outside God's 
 mind. You can't think that 
 God wanted to save your father 
 213 
 

 t 
 
 THE 
 
 from doing it and didn't, 
 unless you think that the devil 
 was stronger than God. 
 You can't think that you are 
 more loving than God ; and 
 if He is so loving, He couldn't 
 let any one do what wasn't 
 just the best thing. I tell 
 you, it's a love that's awful 
 to think of that will go on 
 giving men strength to do 
 wrong until through the ages 
 of hell they get sick of it, 
 rather than make them into 
 machines that would jusc go 
 when they're wound up and 
 that no one could love." 
 
 *' Do they know all this in 
 church, Bart ? " Ann asked. 
 It had never occurred to her 
 before to test her beliefs by 
 this standard, but now it 
 seemed necessary ; she felt 
 after tradition instinctively. 
 The nakedness of Bart's state- 
 ments seemed to want tradition 
 for a garment. 
 
 Bart's words were very 
 simple. "When I was fastened 
 on that log and saw all this, 
 214 
 
■ 
 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 I saw that Jesus knew it all, 
 and that that was what all His 
 life and dying meant, and that 
 the people that follow Him 
 are learning to know that that 
 was what it meant ; it takes 
 them a long, long time, and 
 we can't understand it yet, 
 but as the world goes on it 
 will coiiie clearer. Everybody 
 that knows anything about 
 Him says all this in church, 
 only they don't quite under- 
 stand it. There's many 
 churches, Ann, where the 
 people all get up and say out 
 loud, * He descended into 
 hell.* I don't know much, 
 for I've only read the Bible 
 for one year ; but if you think 
 of all that Jesus did and all 
 that happened to Him, you 
 will see what I mean. People 
 have made little of it by saying 
 it was a miracle and happened 
 just once, but He knew better. 
 He said that God had been 
 doing it always, and that He 
 did nothing but what He saw 
 God doing, and that when men 
 215 
 
 . \ 
 
 ( 
 
THE 
 
 I 
 
 saw Him they would know 
 that God was like that always. 
 Haven't I just been telling 
 you that God bears our sins 
 and carries our sorrows with 
 us until we become blessed 
 because we are holy ? We 
 can always choose to be that, 
 but He will never make us 
 choose. Jesus never made 
 anybody do anything , and, 
 Ann, if there are things in 
 the Bible that we don't under- 
 stand to mean that, it is 
 because they are a parable, and 
 a parable, Ann, is putting 
 something people can't under- 
 stand in pictures that they 
 can look at and look at, and 
 always learn something every 
 time they look, till at last they 
 understand what is meant. 
 People have always learned 
 just as much from the Bible 
 as they can take in, and made 
 mistakes about the rest ; but 
 it is God's character to make 
 us learn even by mistakes." 
 
 Ann's interest began to 
 waver. They were silent 
 2t6 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 awhile, and then, "Bart, do 
 you know where you are ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " I don't seem to care much 
 where I am, as long as you 
 are here." There was a touch 
 of shyness in the tone of the 
 last words that made all that 
 he had said before human to 
 her. 
 
 "If it hadn't been that I 
 thought it was father, I'd have 
 taken you home." She told 
 him how she had brought 
 him. "If it had been a 
 boat," she said, "I'd have 
 found out who it was before 
 we got here, but the canoe 
 was too narrow." 
 
 217 
 
w^ 
 
 THfi 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ann dosed where she sat. 
 Toyner slept again. At 
 length they were both aware 
 that the level light of the sun 
 was in the room. 
 
 Ann sat up, looking at the 
 door intently. Then her eyes 
 moved as if following some 
 one across the room. 
 
 "What is it.?" asked 
 Toyner. 
 
 Ann started up with one 
 swift look of agonised entreaty, 
 and then it seemed that what 
 she had seen vanished, for she 
 turned to Bart trembling, 
 unable to speak at first, sobs 
 struggling with her breath. 
 
 "It was father — I saw him 
 come to the door and come in. 
 He's dead now." 
 
 « What did he look like .? " 
 Toyner' s voice was very quiet. 
 
 "He looked as if he was 
 218 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 dead, but as if he was mad 
 too — his body as if it was 
 dead, and himself wild and 
 mad and burning inside of 
 it." She was crouching on 
 the floor, shaken with the 
 sobs of a new and over- 
 whelming pity. ** O Bart ! I 
 never cared — cared anything 
 for him before — except to 
 have him comfortable and 
 decent ; but if I thought he 
 was going to be — like that — 
 nt)w I think I would die to 
 save him if J could." 
 
 " Would you die to save 
 him ^ So would God ; and 
 you can't believe in God at 
 all unless you know that He 
 does what He wants to do. 
 And God does it ; dies in him, 
 and is in him now ; and He 
 will save him." 
 
 Bart's eyes were full of 
 peace. 
 
 ** Can't you trust God, Ann ? 
 When He is sufl^ering so much 
 for love of each of us ? He 
 could make us into good 
 machines, but He won't. Can't 
 219 
 
THE 
 
 'or 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 
 you begin to do what He 
 is doing for yourself and 
 other people ? Ann, if He 
 suffers in your father and in 
 you, He is glad when you are 
 glad. Try to be glad always 
 in His love and in the glory 
 of it." 
 
 Ann's mind had reverted 
 again to the traditions of which 
 she knew so little. ** I don't 
 want to go to heaven," she said, 
 " if father is in some place 
 looking like he did just now." 
 
 " Heaven " (Bart repeated 
 the word curiously), " heaven 
 is inside you when you grow 
 to be like God ; and through 
 all ages and worlds heaven 
 will be to do as He does, to 
 suffer with those that are 
 suffering, and to die with 
 those that are dying. But 
 remember, Ann, too, it means 
 to rejoice with those who are 
 rejoicing; and joy is greater 
 than pain and heaviness. And 
 heaven means always to be in 
 peace and strength and delight, 
 because it is along the line 
 220 
 
to 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 of God's will where His joy 
 flows.'* 
 
 Ann rose and ran out of 
 the house. To be in the 
 sunshine and among the wild 
 sunflowers was more to her 
 just then than any wisdom. 
 The wave of pity that had 
 gone over her soul had ebbed 
 in a feeling of exhaustion. 
 Her body wanted warmth and 
 heat. She felt that she wanted 
 only that. After she had sat 
 for an hour near the bank of 
 the rippling stream, and all 
 her veins were warmed through 
 and through with the sunlight, 
 the apparition of her father 
 seemed like a dream. She 
 had seen him thus once in life, 
 and supposed him a spirit. 
 She was ready to suppose what 
 she had now seen to be a re- 
 petition of that last meeting, 
 coming before she was well 
 roused from her sleep. She 
 took comfort because her 
 pulses ran full and quiet 
 once more. She thought of 
 her love to Bart, and was 
 
 221 
 
 if 
 
 . \ 
 
 \ 
 
 s^ 
 

 Ift 
 
 If: 
 
 I §1 
 ) I 
 
 THE 
 
 content. As to all that Bart 
 had said — ah well ! something 
 she had gathered from it, which 
 was a seed in her mind, lay 
 quiet now. 
 
 At length Toyner found 
 strength to walk feebly, and 
 sat down on the doorstep, 
 where he could see Ann. It 
 was his first conscious look 
 upon this remoje autumn 
 bower, and he never forgot 
 its joy. The eyes of men 
 who have just arisen from the 
 dim region that lies near death 
 are often curiously full of 
 unreasoning pleasure. Within 
 himself Toyner called the 
 place the Garden of Eden. 
 
 " If only I had not brought 
 you here ! " said Ann. "If 
 only I had not left the canoe 
 untied ! " 
 
 For answer Bart looked 
 around upon the trees and 
 flowers and upon her with 
 happy eyes that had no hint 
 of past or future in them. 
 Something of the secret of all 
 peace — the Eternal Now — 
 
 222 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 remained with him as long 
 as the weakness of this injury 
 remained. 
 
 "Don't fret, Ann" (with 
 a smile). 
 
 " I'm afraid for you ; you 
 look awful ill, and ought to 
 have a doctor." 
 
 He had it in his mind to 
 tell her that he was all right 
 and desired only what he had ; 
 but, in the dreamy reflective 
 mood that still held him, what 
 he said was : 
 
 " If all the trouble in earth 
 and heaven and hell were put 
 together, Ann, it would be 
 just like clouds passing before 
 the sun of joy. The clouds are 
 never at an end, but each one 
 passes and melts away. Ann ! 
 sorrow and joy are like the 
 clouds and the sun." 
 
 It is never destined that 
 man should remain long in 
 Eden. About noon that day 
 Ann heard a shout from the 
 direction of the lake outside 
 among the dead trees; the 
 shout was repeated yet nearer, 
 223 
 
i ; 
 
 i\ i 
 
 \i 
 
 THE 
 
 and in a minute or two she 
 recognised the voice and heard 
 the sound of oars splashing 
 up the narrow channel made 
 by the running creek. The 
 thought of this deHverance 
 had not occurred to her ; yet 
 when she recognised the voice 
 it seemed to her natural enough 
 that David Brown should have 
 divined where his canoe might 
 have been brought. She stood 
 waiting while his boat came 
 up the creek. The young 
 athlete sprang from it, question 
 and reproach in his handsome 
 young face. She found no 
 difficulty then in telling him 
 just what she had done, and 
 why. She felt herself sud- 
 denly freed from all that 
 life of frequent deception 
 which she had so long prac- 
 tised. She had no desire 
 to dupe any man now into 
 doing any service. Something 
 in the stress of the last days, 
 in her new reverence for Bart, 
 had wrought a change in the 
 relative value she set on truth 
 
 224 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and the gain of untruth. She 
 held up her head with a 
 gesture of new dignity as 
 she told David that she had 
 sought her father and found 
 Bart. 
 
 "Father has half killed 
 him, and now it hurts me 
 to see him ill. Bart is a 
 good man. O David, I tell 
 you there is no one in the 
 world I mind about so much 
 as Bart. Could you take 
 him in your boat now to the 
 hospital at The Mills.? He 
 would have done as much for 
 you, and more, if you had got 
 hurt in that way." 
 
 So David took the man 
 Ann loved to the hospital 
 at The Mills. He did it 
 willingly if he did it ruefully. 
 Ann went home, as she had 
 come, in the canoe, except 
 that she had gone out in the 
 dead of night and she went 
 home in broad daylight. 
 
 No one blamed Ann when 
 they knew she had gone out 
 to help her father; no one 
 
 225 Q. 
 
• \ 
 
 }V 
 
 i 
 
 ' >'' ! 
 
 ! ) 
 
 < 
 
 THE 
 
 smiled or sneered when they 
 found that she had succeeded 
 in saving Toyner's life. 
 
 A few days passed, and poor 
 Markham was found drowned 
 in a forest pool. They brought 
 him home and buried him 
 decently at Fentown for his 
 daughter's sake. 
 
 Toyner lay ill for weeks in 
 the little wooden hospital at 
 The Mills. 
 
 226 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 When Toyner was well he 
 came home again. His mind 
 was still animated with the 
 conception of God as suffering 
 in the human struggle, but as 
 absolute Lord of that struggle, 
 and the consequent belief that 
 nothing but obedience to the 
 lower motive can be called 
 evil. The new view of truth 
 his vision had given him 
 had become too really a part 
 of his mind to be over- 
 thrown. It was no doubt a 
 growth from the long years 
 of desultory browsing upon 
 popular science and the one 
 year that had been so entirely 
 devoted to the story of the 
 gospel and to prayer. He 
 could not doubt his new creed ; 
 but no sooner had he left the 
 hospital walls than that burden 
 came upon him of which the 
 227 
 
THE 
 
 
 i 
 
 il- 
 
 greatest stress is this, that 
 in trying to fit new light 
 to common use we are apt 
 to lose the clearer vision of 
 the light itself. 
 
 In Toyner's former religious 
 experience he had been much 
 upheld by the knowledge that 
 he was walking in step with 
 a vast army of Christians. 
 Now he no longer believed 
 himself in the ways of exclusive 
 thought and practices in which 
 the best men he knew were 
 walking. The only religious 
 thinkers with whom he had 
 come in contact gave up a large 
 class of human activities and the 
 majority of human souls to the 
 almost exclusive dominion of 
 the devil. As far as Toyner 
 knew he was alone in the 
 world with his new idea. He 
 had none of that vanity and 
 self-confidence which would 
 have made it easy for him to 
 hold to it. It did not appear 
 to him reasonable that he 
 could be right and these 
 others wrong. He did not 
 228 
 
 I I 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 know that no man can think 
 alone, that by some strange 
 necessity of thought he could 
 only think what other men 
 were then thinking. He 
 felt homesick, sick for the 
 support of those faithful ones 
 which he had been wont to 
 see in imagination with him : 
 their conscious communion 
 with God was the only good 
 life, the life which he must 
 seek to attain and from which 
 he feared above all things to 
 fall short ; and that being so, 
 it would have been easier, far 
 easier, to call his new belief 
 folly, heresy, nay, blasphemy if 
 that were needful, and to repent 
 of it, if he could have done 
 so. He could not, do what 
 he would ; he saw his vision 
 to be true. 
 
 The thing had grown with 
 his growth ; he believed that 
 a voice from heaven had 
 spoken it. Is not this the 
 history of all revelation ? 
 
 When I say thai Tw^-i— 
 could not doubt his new 
 229 
 
' 
 
 •; 
 
 I 
 
 |i 
 
 i 
 
 -H 
 
 THE 
 
 conception of God and of 
 the human struggle, I mean 
 that he could not in sincerest 
 thought hold the contrary to 
 be true. I do not mean to 
 say that daily and hourly, 
 when about his commoii avo- 
 cations, his nev/ inspiration 
 did not seem a mere will-o'- 
 the-wisp of the mind. It 
 took months and years to 
 briag it into any accustomed 
 relation to every-day matters 
 of thought and act; and it 
 is this habitual adjustment of 
 our inward belief to our out- 
 ward environment that makes 
 any creed appear to be in- 
 controvertible. 
 
 Oh the loneliness of it, to 
 have a creed that no companion 
 has ! The sheer sorrow of 
 being compelled by the law of 
 his mind to believe concerning 
 God what he did not know that 
 any other man believed time 
 and time again obscured Bart 
 Toyner's vision of the divine. 
 
 xiiv power of the miracle 
 wrought at his conversion 
 230 
 
 ■WlH 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 was gone ; he had been taught 
 that the miraculous power was 
 only to be with him as long as 
 he yielded implicit obedience, 
 but that implied a clear-cut 
 knowledge of right from wrong 
 which Toyner did not now 
 possess ; many of the old rules 
 clashed with that one large 
 new rule which had come to 
 him — that any way of life was 
 wicked which made it appear 
 that God was in some provinces 
 of life and not in others. 
 " Whatever is not of faith is 
 sin " ; but while an old and a 
 new faith are warring in a 
 man's soul the definition fails : 
 many a righteous act is born 
 of doubt, not faith. This 
 was one reason why Toyner 
 no longer possessed all-conquer- 
 ing strength. Another reason 
 there was which acted as 
 powerfully to rob him — the 
 soul-bewildering difficulty of 
 believing that the God of 
 physical law can also be the 
 God of promise, that He that 
 is within us and beneath us 
 231 
 
 
THE 
 
 • 
 
 ( 
 
 a 
 
 ' i'. 
 
 \ 
 
 i \ 
 
 can also be above us with 
 power to lift us up. 
 
 Without a firm grip on this 
 supernatural upholding power 
 Toyner was a man with a 
 diseased craving for intoxicants. 
 He fled from them as a man 
 flies from deadly infection ; but 
 with all the help that total 
 abstinence and the absence of 
 temptation can give he failed 
 in the battle. A few weeks 
 after he had returned to Fen- 
 town he was brought into his 
 mother's house one morning 
 dead drunk. The mother, 
 whose heart had revived within 
 her a little during the last year, 
 now sank again into her previ- 
 ous dejection. Her friends said 
 to her that they had always 
 known how it would be in the 
 case of so sudden a reformation. 
 When Toyner woke up his 
 humiliation was terrible ; he 
 bore it as he had borne all the 
 rest of his pain and shame, 
 silently enough. No one but 
 Ann Markham even guessed 
 the agony that he endured, 
 232 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 and she had not the chance to 
 give a kindly look, for at this 
 time Toyner, unable to trust 
 himself with himself, was 
 afraid to look upon Ann lest 
 he should smirch her life. 
 
 Again Toyner set his feet 
 sternly in the way of sobriety. 
 Ah ! how he prayed, beseech- 
 ing that God, who had revealed 
 Himself to be greater and 
 nobler than had before been 
 known, would not because 
 of that show Himself to be 
 less powerful towards those 
 that fear Him. It is the 
 prayer of faith, not the 
 prayer of agonised entreaty, 
 that takes hold of strength. 
 Toyner failed again and again. 
 There was a vast difference 
 now between this and his 
 former life of failure, for now 
 he never despaired, but took 
 up the struggle each time just 
 where he had laid it down, 
 and moreover the intervals of 
 sobriety were long, and the 
 fits of drunkenness short and 
 few ; but there were not many 
 
 ^33 
 
■■ i! 
 
 ; (i 
 
 y 
 
 THE 
 
 besides Ann who noticed this 
 difFerence. And as for Toyner, 
 the shame and misery of failure 
 so filled his horizon that he 
 could not see the favourable 
 contrast — shame and misery, 
 but never despair ; that one 
 word had gone out of his life. 
 One day a visitor came 
 hurrying down the street to 
 Toyner's home. The stranger 
 had the face of a saint, and the 
 hasty feet of those who are 
 conscious that they bear tidings 
 of great joy. It was Toyner's 
 friend, the preacher. Bart 
 had often written to him, and 
 he to his convert. Of late the 
 letters had been fraught with 
 pain to both, but this was the 
 first time that the preacher had 
 found himself able to come a 
 long journey since he had 
 heard of Toyner's fall. He 
 came, his heart big with the 
 prayer of faith that what he 
 had done once he might be 
 permitted to do again — lead 
 this man once more into the 
 humble path of a time-honoured 
 
 234 
 
 ! 
 I 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 creed and certain selt-conquest. 
 To the preacher the two were 
 one and indivisible. 
 
 When this life is passed 
 away, shall we see that our 
 prayers for others have been 
 answered most lavishly by the 
 very contradiction of what we 
 have desired ? 
 
 The visit was well timed. 
 Bart Toyner's father lay dying ; 
 and in spite of that, or rather 
 in consequence of nights of 
 watching and the necessary 
 handling of stimulants, Bart 
 sat in his own room, only just 
 returned to soberness after a 
 drunken night. With face 
 buried in his hands, and a 
 heart that was breaking with 
 sorrow, Bart was sitting alone ; 
 and then the preacher came in. 
 
 The preacher sat beside him, 
 and put his arm around him. 
 The preacher was a man whose 
 embrace no man could shrink 
 from, for the physical part of 
 him was as nothing compared 
 with the love and strength of 
 its animating soul. 
 
 2J5 
 
THE 
 
 " Our Lord sends a message 
 to you : * All things are pos- 
 sible to him that believeth.* " 
 The preacher spoke with quiet 
 strength. '* Tou know, dear 
 brother, that this word of His 
 is certainly true.'* 
 
 y" Yes, yes, I know it. By 
 the hour in which I first saw 
 you I know it ; but I cannot 
 take hold of it again in the 
 same way. My faith wavers." 
 
 " Your faith wavers } '* 
 The preacher spoke question- 
 ingly. " My brother, faith in 
 itself is nothing ; it is only 
 the hand that takes ; it is the 
 Saviour in whom we believe 
 who has the power. You 
 have turned away from Him. 
 It is not that your faith 
 wavers, but that you are walk- 
 ing straight forward on the 
 road of infidelity, and on that 
 path you will never find a God 
 to help, but only a devil to 
 devour." 
 
 Toyner shivered even within 
 the clasp of the encircling arm. 
 " 1 had tried to tell you in 
 236 
 
mm 
 
 ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 writing that the Saviour you 
 follow is more to me— far 
 more, not less." 
 
 " In what way ? " The 
 preacher's voice was full of 
 sympathy ; but here, and for 
 the first time, Bart felt it was 
 an unconscious trick. Sym- 
 pathy was assumed to help 
 him to speak. The preacher 
 could conceive of no divine 
 object of love that was not 
 limited to the pattern he had 
 learned to dwell upon. 
 
 " I am not good at words," 
 Toyner spoke humbly. " I 
 took a long time to write to 
 you ; I said it better than I 
 could now, that God is far 
 more because He is a faithful 
 Creator, responsible for us 
 always, whatever we do, to 
 bring us to good. Now I do 
 not need to keep dividing 
 things and people and thoughts 
 into His and not-His. That 
 was what it came to before. 
 You may say it didn't, but it 
 did. And all we know about 
 Jesus — don't you see " (Bart 
 
 237 
 
 Itr* 
 
• I 
 
 I 
 
 THE 
 
 raised his face with piteous, 
 hunted look) — ** don't you see 
 that what His life and death 
 meant was — -just what I have 
 told you ? God doesn't hold 
 back His robe, telling people 
 what they ought to do, and 
 then judge them. He does 
 not shrink from taking sin on 
 Himself to bring them through 
 death to life. Doesn't your 
 book say so again and again 
 and again .? " 
 
 " God cannot sin ! " cried 
 the preacher, with the warmth 
 of holy indignation. 
 
 Toyner became calm with 
 a momentary contempt of the 
 other's lack of understanding. 
 " That goes without saying, or 
 He would not be God." 
 
 ** But that is what you have 
 said in your letters." 
 
 There was silence in the 
 room. The misery of his 
 loneliness took hold of Toyner 
 till it almost felt like despair. 
 Who was he, unlearned, very 
 sinful, even now shaken with 
 the palsy of recent excess — 
 2j8 
 
 t\ 
 
 1, i 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 who was he to bandy words 
 with a holy man ? All words 
 that came from his own lips 
 that hour seemed to him 
 horribly profane. The new 
 idea that possessed him was 
 what he lived by, and yet 
 alone with it he did not gather 
 strength from it to walk up- 
 right. 
 
 " The father tempted the 
 prodigal," he said, " when he 
 gave him the substance to 
 waste with sinners. Did the 
 father sin ? The time had 
 come when nothing but temp- 
 tation — yes, and sin too — could 
 save. Most things, sir, that 
 you hold about God I can 
 hold too. There are bad men, 
 powerful and seducing men, 
 in the world ; there may easily 
 be unseen devils. There is 
 hell on earth, and I don't doubt 
 but that there's the awfulest, 
 longest depth of the same kind 
 of hell beyond. There's heaven 
 on earth, and all the love and 
 pain of love we have tell us 
 there's heaven beyond, un- 
 
 239 
 
n^ 
 
 I 
 
 ' > 
 
 THE 
 
 speakable and eternal ; but, 
 sir, when you come to limit 
 God — to say, here the re- 
 sponsibility of the faithful 
 God stops, here man's self- 
 dest.uction begins — I can't 
 believe that. He must be 
 responsible, not only for start- 
 ing us with freedom, but re- 
 sponsible for the use we make 
 of it and for all the conse- 
 quence. When you say of 
 the infinite God that hell and 
 the devils are something out- 
 side of Him — I can't think 
 that. The devils must live and 
 move and have their being 
 in Him. When you say the 
 holy God ever said to spirit 
 He had created, * Depart from 
 Me ' (except in a parable 
 meaning that as long as a 
 spirit chose evil it would not 
 be conscious of God's nearness), 
 I tell you, sir, by all He has 
 taught me out of the Bible 
 you gave me, I don't believe 
 it. We've studied the Bible 
 so much now that we know 
 that holiness is just love — the 
 
 240 
 
 ■fS 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 sort of love that holds holy 
 hatred and every other good 
 feeling within itself. We 
 know that love can't fail and 
 cast out the thing it loves. 
 When we know a law, we know 
 the way it must work. If the 
 Bible seems to say the big law 
 it teaches doesn't work out 
 true, it must be like what is 
 said of the six days of creation, 
 something that came as near 
 as it could to what people 
 would understand, but that 
 needs a new explanation." 
 
 The young preacher had 
 withdrawn his encirclinp^ arm. 
 He sat looking very stern and 
 sad. 
 
 " When you begin to doubt 
 God's word, you will soon 
 doubt that He is, and that He 
 is the rewarder of them that 
 seek Him." 
 
 " Sir, it seems to me that 
 it's doubting the incarnate 
 Word to believe what you do, 
 because the main plain drift 
 of all He was and did is con- 
 tradicted by some few things 
 
 241 R 
 
THE 
 
 ! 
 
 men supposed Him to mean 
 because they thought them. 
 But it*s not that I would set 
 myself up to know about 
 doctrines, if it wasn't that this 
 doctrine had driven me to stop 
 believing and stop caring to do 
 right. I can't just explain it 
 clearly, but when I came to 
 Him the way you told me, and 
 thought the way you told me, 
 I just went on and did it and 
 was blessed and happy in the 
 love of God as I never could 
 have dreamed of ; but ail the 
 time there was a something — 
 I didn't know exactly what — 
 that I couldn't bring my mind 
 to ; so I just left it. But when 
 I got tempted, and prayed and 
 prayed, then it came on me 
 all of a sudden that I didn't 
 want a God who had to do 
 with such a little part of life 
 as that. You see it had been 
 simmering in my mind all the 
 days that I stopped doing the 
 things you told me were 
 wrong and yet wenc on keep- 
 ing among the publicans and 
 242 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 sinners because He did. If 
 I'd just stayed with the church- 
 goers, maybe I wouldn't have 
 felt it; but to think that I 
 couldn't take a hand in an 
 innocent game o* cards, or 
 dance with the girls that 
 hadn't had another bit of 
 amusement — all that wasn't 
 very important, but that sort 
 of thing began it. And then 
 to think that God was in me 
 and not in them ! I began, as 
 I went down the street, won- 
 dering who had God in his 
 heart and who hadn't, that I 
 might know who to trust and 
 who to try to do good to. 
 And then, most of all, there 
 was all my books that I liked 
 so much. I didn't read them 
 any more, for when I thought 
 that God had set every word 
 in the Bible quite true and 
 left all the other books to be 
 true or not just as it happened, 
 I couldn't think to look at any 
 book but the Bible ; for one's 
 greedy of knowing how things 
 really are — that's what one 
 
 243 
 
THE 
 
 reads for. So you see it was 
 all ih my mind God did things 
 differently one time and another, 
 like making one book and not 
 the others, and only such a 
 small part of things was His ; 
 and then when the temptation 
 came, you see, if I'd thought 
 God was in Markham and the 
 girls I could have done my 
 duty and let Him take care 
 of them ; but it was because 
 I'd no cause to think that, and 
 believed that He'd let them 
 go, that I couldn't let them 
 go. I felt that I'd rather give 
 up the sort of a God I thought 
 on and look after them a bit. 
 It wasn't that I thought it out 
 clear at the time ; but that was 
 how it came about, and I was 
 ready to kick religion over. 
 And, sir, if God hadn't taught 
 me that when I went down to 
 hell He was there, I don't 
 think I d want to be religious 
 again; but now I do want it 
 with all my might and main, 
 and I'll never let go of it, just 
 as I know He won't let go of 
 244 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 me — no, not if some of these 
 days they have to shovel me 
 into a drunkard's grave ; but I 
 believe that God's got the same 
 strength for me just as He 
 had when you converted me.'* 
 Toyner looked round him 
 despairingly as a man might 
 look for something that is in- 
 explicably lost. " I can't think 
 how it is, but I can't get hold 
 of His strength." 
 
 The preacher meditated. 
 It had already been given to 
 him to pray with great per- 
 sistency and faith for this back- 
 slider, and he had come sure 
 of bringing with him adequate 
 help; but now his hope was less. 
 In a moment he threw himself 
 upon his knees and prayed 
 aloud : " Heavenly Father, 
 open the heart of Thine erring 
 child to see that it was the 
 craft and subtlety of the devil 
 that devised for him a temp- 
 tation he could not resist, — 
 none other but the devil 
 could have been so subtle ; 
 and show him that this same 
 
 H5 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
mmm 
 
 THE 
 
 devil, clothed as an angel of 
 light, has feigned Thy voice 
 and whispered in his ear, and 
 that until he returns to the 
 simple faith as it is in the 
 gospel Thou cansi not help 
 him as of old.** 
 
 "Stop!'* (huskily). "I have 
 not let go of His faith. His 
 faith was in the Father of 
 sinners." 
 
 Then the preacher strove 
 in words to show him the 
 greatness of his error, and why 
 he could not hold to it and 
 live in the victory which faith 
 gives. It was no narrow or 
 weak view that the preacher 
 took of the univen e and God's 
 scheme for its salvation ; for 
 he too lived at a time when 
 men were learning more of the 
 love of God, and he too had 
 spoken with God. The hard 
 outline of his creed had grown 
 luminous, fringed with the 
 divine light from beyond, as 
 the bars of prison windows 
 grow dazzling and fade when 
 the prisoner looks at the sun. 
 246 
 
 
 iNMiiiili 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 d of 
 
 oice 
 
 and 
 
 the 
 
 the 
 
 help 
 
 All that the preacher said was 
 wise and strong, and the only 
 reason he failed to convince 
 was that Toyner felt that the 
 thought in which his own 
 storm-tossed soul had anchored 
 was a little wiser and stronger 
 — only a little, for there was 
 not a great difference between 
 them, after all. 
 
 " I take in all that you say, 
 sir ; but you see I can't help 
 feeling sure that it*s true that 
 God is living with us as much 
 and as true when we're in the 
 worst sort of sin, and the 
 greater sin that it brings — for 
 the punishment of sin is more 
 and more sin — and being sure, 
 I know that everything else 
 that is true will come to fit 
 in with it, though I may not 
 be able rightly to put it in 
 now, and what won't come to 
 fit in with it can't be true." 
 
 The preacher perceived that 
 the evil which he had set 
 himself to slay was giantlike 
 in strength. He chose him 
 smooth stones for his sling. 
 247 
 
i 
 
 THE 
 
 His heart was growing heavy 
 with fear of failure, his spirit 
 within him still raised its 
 face heavenward in unceasing 
 prayer. He began to tell the 
 history of God's ways with 
 man from the first. He spoke 
 of Abraham. He urged that 
 the great strength had always 
 come to men who had trusted 
 God's word against reason and 
 against sight. And he saw 
 then that for the first time 
 Toyner raised up his head and 
 seemed stirred with a reviving 
 strength. 
 
 The preacher paused, hoping 
 to hear some encouraging word 
 in correspondence to the ges- 
 ture, but none came. 
 
 Then he spoke of Moses 
 and of Joshua, for he was 
 following the tale of God's 
 rejection of sinful nations. 
 
 Toyner answered now. His 
 eye was clearer, his hand 
 steadier. " I have read there's 
 many that say that God could 
 not have told His people to 
 slay whole nations, men, 
 
 248 
 
 
 I 
 
 HIMMIM 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 women, and children. I think 
 it's the shallowest thing that 
 was ever said. I don't know 
 about His telling people to do 
 it — that may be a poem ; but 
 that He gave it to them to do, 
 that He gives it to winds and 
 floods and fires and plagues to 
 do, time and time and again, 
 is as certain as that if there's 
 a God He must have things 
 His way or He isn't God. 
 But I don't believe that in this 
 world, or in the next, He ever 
 left man, woman, or child, but 
 lived with each one all through 
 the sin and the destruction. 
 And, sir, I take it that men 
 couldn't see that until at last 
 there came One who looked 
 into God's heart and saw the 
 truth, and He wanted to tell 
 it, but there were no words, 
 so though He had power in 
 Him to be King over the 
 whole earth. He chose instead 
 to be the companion of sinners, 
 and to go down into all the 
 depths of pain and shame and 
 death and hell. And He said 
 249 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
T*— 
 
 THE 
 
 \ 
 
 '■' 
 
 His Father had been doing it 
 always, and He did it to show 
 forth the Father. That is 
 what it means. I am sure that 
 is what it means.'* 
 
 The preacher was surprised 
 to see the transformation that 
 was going on in the man before 
 him. That wonderful law 
 which gives to some centre of 
 energy in the brain the control 
 of bodily strength, if but the 
 right relationship between 
 mind and body can be estab- 
 lished, was again working, 
 although in a lesser degree 
 than- formerly, to restore this 
 man before his eyes. Bart, 
 who had appeared shrunken, 
 trembling, and watery-eyed, 
 was pulling himself together 
 with some strength that he 
 had got from somewhere, and 
 was standing up again ready 
 to play a man's part. The 
 preacher did not understand 
 why. There seemed to him 
 to have been nothing but 
 failure in the interview. He 
 made one more effort ; he put 
 250 
 
 w^ 
 
 iillMM 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 the last stone in his sling. 
 Toyner had just spoken of Lhe 
 sacrifice of Calvary, and to the 
 preacher it seemed that he set 
 it at naught, because he was 
 claiming salvation for those 
 who mocked as well as for 
 those who believe. 
 
 "Think of it," he said; 
 " you make wrong but an 
 inferior kind of right. You 
 take away the reason for the 
 one great Sacrifice, and in this 
 you are slighting Him who 
 suffered for you." 
 
 Then he made, with all the 
 force and eloquence he could, 
 the personal appeal of the 
 Christ whom he felt to be 
 slighted. 
 
 " You have spoken of the 
 sufferings of lost and wretched 
 men," he went on ; " think of 
 His sufferings ! You have 
 spoken of your loneliness ; 
 think of His loneliness ! " 
 
 Then suddenly Bart Toyner 
 
 made a gesture as a slave 
 
 might who casts off the chains 
 
 of bondage. The appeal to 
 
 251 
 
'f 
 
 !i 
 
 THE 
 
 which he was listening was 
 not for him, but for some 
 man whom the preacher's 
 imagination had drawn in his 
 place, who did not appropriate 
 the great Sacrifice and seek to 
 live in its power. He did not 
 now seek to explain again that 
 the death of Christ was to him 
 as an altar, the point in human 
 thought where always the fire of 
 the divine Life descends upon 
 the soul self-offered in like 
 sacrifice. He had tried to 
 explain this ; now he tried 
 no more, but he held out his 
 hands with a sign of joy and 
 recovered strength. 
 
 " You came to help me ; 
 you have prayed for me ; you 
 have helped me ; you have 
 been given something to say. 
 Listen : you have told me of 
 Abraham ; he was called to 
 go out alone, quite alone. 
 Now you have spoken to me 
 of Another who was alone." 
 Toyner was incoherent. ** That 
 was why He bore it, that 
 we might know that it was 
 252 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 possible to have faith all alone 
 because He had it. It is easy 
 to believe in God holding us 
 up when others do, but awfully 
 hard all alone. He knew that, 
 He warned them to keep to- 
 gether ; but all the same He 
 lived out His prayers alone." 
 
 Toyner looked at the 
 preacher, love and reverence 
 in his eyes. " You saved me 
 once," he said ; " you have 
 saved me again." 
 
 But the preacher went home 
 very sorrowful, for he did 
 not believe that Bart Toyner 
 was saved. 
 
 253 
 
THE 
 
 «i 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 It: 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The spiritual strength that 
 proceeds from every holy man 
 had again flowed in life-giving 
 stream from the preacher to 
 Bart Toyner. The help was 
 adequate. Toyner never be- 
 came intoxicated again. 
 
 His father died; and for 
 two years or more the mother, 
 who had lived frugally all 
 her life, still lived frugally, 
 although land and money had 
 been left to her. The mother 
 would not trust her son, and 
 yet gradually she began to 
 realise that it was he who was 
 quietly heaping into her lap 
 all those joys of which she 
 had been so long deprived. 
 At length she died, the happy 
 mother of a son who had won 
 the respect of other men. 
 
 It was after that that Toy- 
 ner wedded Ann Markham. 
 254 
 
 ■iMMM 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 Then, when he had the power 
 to live a more individual life 
 of enjoyment and effort, it 
 began to be known little by 
 little that these two had 
 committed that sin against 
 society so hard to forgive, the 
 sin of having their own creed 
 and their own thoughts and 
 their own ways. 
 
 Toyner was not a preacher. 
 It was not in him to try to 
 change the ideas of those who 
 were doing well with what 
 ideas they had. All that he 
 desired was to live so that it 
 might be known that his God 
 was the God of the whole 
 wide round of human activity, 
 a God who blessed the just 
 and the unjust. Toyner 
 desired to be constantly blessing 
 both the bad and the good 
 with the blessing of love and 
 home which had been given 
 to him. It was inevitable 
 that to carry out such an idea 
 a man must live through many 
 mistakes and much failure. 
 The ideal itself was an offence 
 
)l 
 
 
 THE 
 
 to society. We have all heard 
 of such offences and how they 
 have been punished. 
 
 One great factor in the 
 refining of Ann's life was her 
 lover's long neglect ; for he, 
 in the simple belief that she 
 must know his heart and 
 purpose and that she would 
 not be much benefited by his 
 companionship, left her for 
 those years that passed before 
 he married her wholly ignorant 
 of his constancy. Ann was 
 constant. Had he explained 
 himself she would have been 
 content and ta'"in him more 
 or less at his own valuation, 
 as we all take those who talk 
 about themselves. Having 
 no such explanation to listen 
 to, she watched and pondered 
 all that he did. Before the 
 day came in which he made 
 his shy and hesitating offer 
 of marriage, she had grown to 
 be one with him in hope and 
 desire. Together they made 
 their mistakes and lived down 
 their failure. They had other 
 
 256 
 
 I 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 ving 
 
 sten 
 
 lered 
 
 the 
 
 ade 
 
 fFer 
 
 to 
 
 and 
 
 ade 
 
 wn 
 
 ther 
 
 troubles too, for the babies 
 lived and died one by one. 
 
 There is seen to be a mar- 
 vellous alchemy in true piety. 
 Mind and sense subject to 
 its process become refined. 
 Where refinement is not the 
 result, we may believe that 
 there is a false note in the 
 devotion, that there is self- 
 seeking in the effort toward 
 God. Toyner's wealth grew 
 with the spread of the town 
 over the land he owned. He 
 had the good taste to spend 
 well the money he devoted 
 to pleasure ; yet it was not 
 books or pictures or music, 
 acquired late in life, that gave 
 to him and to his wife the 
 power to grow in harmony 
 with their surroundings. It 
 was the high life of prayer 
 and eflTort that they lived that 
 made it possible for God — the 
 God of art as truly as the God 
 of prayer — to teach them. 
 
 It is not at the best a 
 cultured place, this backwoods 
 town. There was many a slip 
 257 s 
 
VHHMP 
 
 THE 
 
 li; 
 
 in grammar, many a broad 
 uncouth accent, heard daily 
 in Ann's drawing-room ; but 
 what mental life the town had 
 came to centre in that room. 
 Gradually reflecting neigh- 
 bours began to learn that 
 there was a beneficent force 
 other than intellectual at work 
 there. 
 
 Young men who needed 
 interest and pleasure, the poor 
 who needed warmth and ^ood, 
 came together to that room, 
 and met there the drunkard 
 in his sober intervals, the 
 gamester when he cared to 
 play for mere pastime ; yes, 
 and others, the more evil, 
 were made welcome there. 
 It was not forgotten that 
 Toyner had been a wicked 
 man and that Ann's father 
 had been a murderer. 
 
 It was a strange effort this, to 
 increase virtue in the virtuous, 
 not by separation from, but 
 by friendship with, the unre- 
 pentant. To Toyner sin was 
 an abhorred thing. It con- 
 258 
 
ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 sisted always, yet only, in 
 failure to tread in the foot- 
 prints of God, as far as it was 
 given to each man to see God's 
 way — in obedience to the lower 
 motive in any moment of the 
 perpetual choice of life. For 
 himself, his life was impassioned 
 with the belief that it was 
 wicked to live as if God was 
 not the God of the whole of 
 what we may know. 
 
 I, who have seen it, tell 
 you that the atmosphere of 
 that house was always swe t. 
 There were many young girls 
 who came to it often, and 
 laughed and danced with men 
 who were not righteous, and the 
 girls lived more holy lives than 
 before. I would say this : — 
 do not let any one imitate the 
 method of life which Toyner 
 and his wife practised unless 
 by prayer he can obtain the 
 power of the unseen holiness 
 to work upon the flux of 
 circumstance ; yet do not let 
 those fear to imitate it who 
 have learned the secret of 
 259 
 
THE ZEIT-GEIST 
 
 prayer. It was a strenuous 
 life of prayer and self-denial 
 that these two lived until their 
 race in this phase of things 
 was run. 
 
 i:i 
 
 ' 
 
 // t's with this abrupt note of 
 personal observation and reflection 
 that the schoolmaster's manuscript 
 ends. He had evidently become 
 one of Toyner^s disciples. It is 
 well that we should know what 
 our brothers think^ feel with their 
 hearts for an hour, tf it may not be 
 for longer. 
 
 u 
 
 HazeU, Wfitsou, ft Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury 
 
Tenuous 
 
 If- denial 
 
 itil their 
 
 things 
 
 note of 
 reflection 
 muscript 
 
 become 
 5. // is 
 )w what 
 nth their 
 ly not be 
 
 1 Aylesbury