第68章 THE BALKING OF CHRISTOPHER(6)

"I am glad of that," said Christopher. "All that troubled me about being here was that Myrtle might wake up in the night and hear noises."Christopher had grown even more radiant. He was effulgent with pure happiness.

"You aren't going to tap your sugar-maples?"said Stephen, looking up at the great symmetrical efflorescence of rose and green which towered about them.

Christopher laughed. "No, bless 'em," said he, "the trees shall keep their sugar this season. This week is the first time I've had a chance to get ac-quainted with them and sort of enter into their feel-ings. Good Lord! I've seen how I can love those trees, Mr. Wheaton! See the pink on their young leaves! They know more than you and I. They know how to grow young every spring."Stephen did not tell Christopher how Ellen and Myrtle were to work the farm with his aid. The two women had bade him not. Christopher seemed to have no care whatever about it. He was simply happy. When Stephen left, he looked at him and said, with the smile of a child, "Do you think I am crazy?""Crazy? No," replied Stephen.

"Well, I ain't. I'm just getting fed. I was starv-ing to death. Glad you don't think I'm crazy, be-cause I couldn't help matters by saying I wasn't.

Myrtle don't think I am, I know. As for Ellen, Ihaven't seen her since she was a little girl. I don't believe she can be much like Myrtle; but I guess if she is what she promised to turn out she wouldn't think anybody ought to go just her way to have it the right way.""I rather think she is like that, although I saw her for the first time this morning," said Stephen.

"I begin to feel that I may not need to stay here much longer," Christopher called after him. "Ibegin to feel that I am getting what I came for so fast that I can go back pretty soon."But it was the last day of July before he came.

He chose the cool of the evening after a burning day, and descended the mountain in the full light of the moon. He had gone up the mountain like an old man; he came down like a young one.

When he came at last in sight of his own home, he paused and stared. Across the grass-land a heavily laden wagon was moving toward his barn.

Upon this wagon heaped with hay, full of silver lights from the moon, sat a tall figure all in white, which seemed to shine above all things. Christopher did not see the man on the other side of the wagon leading the horses; he saw only this wonderful white figure. He hurried forward and Myrtle came down the road to meet him. She had been watch-ing for him, as she had watched every night.

"Who is it on the load of hay?" asked Christopher.

"Ellen," replied Myrtle.

"Oh!" said Christopher. "She looked like an angel of the Lord, come to take up the burden I had dropped while I went to learn of Him.""Be you feeling pretty well, Christopher?" asked Myrtle. She thought that what her husband had said was odd, but he looked well, and he might have said it simply because he was a man.

Christopher put his arm around Myrtle. "I am better than I ever was in my whole life, Myrtle, and I've got more courage to work now than I had when I was young. I had to go away and get rested, but I've got rested for all my life. We shall get along all right as long as we live.""Ellen and the minister are going to get married come Christmas," said Myrtle.

"She is lucky. He is a man that can see with the eyes of other people," said Christopher.

It was after the hay had been unloaded and Chris-topher had been shown the garden full of lusty vegetables, and told of the great crop with no draw-back, that he and the minister had a few minutes alone together at the gate.

"I want to tell you, Mr. Wheaton, that I am settled in my mind now. I shall never complain again, no matter what happens. I have found that all the good things and all the bad things that come to a man who tries to do right are just to prove to him that he is on the right path. They are just the flowers and sunbeams, and the rocks and snakes, too, that mark the way. And -- I have found out more than that. I have found out the answer to my 'why?'""What is it?" asked Stephen, gazing at him curi-ously from the wonder-height of his own special happiness.

"I have found out that the only way to heaven for the children of men is through the earth," said Christopher.