GODLINESS \ 75

David could not understand what had so changed her. Her habitually dissatisfied face had become, he thought, the most peaceful and lovely thing he

had ever seen. When he began to weep she held .

him more and more tightly. On and on went her voice. It was not harsh or shrill as when she talked to her husband, but was like rain falling on trees. Presently men began coming to the door to report that he had not been found, but she made him hide and be silent until she had sent them away. He thought it must be a game his mother and the men of the town were playing with him and laughed joyously. Into his mind came the thought that his having been lost and frightened in the darkness was an altogether un- important matter. He thought that he would have been willing to go through the frightful ex- perience a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother had suddenly become.

During the last years of young David’s boy- hood he saw his mother but seldom and she be- came for him just a woman with whom he had once lived. Still he could not get her figure out of his mind and as he grew older it became more definite. When he was twelve years old he went to the Bentley farm to live. Old Jesse came into town and fairly demanded that he be given charge