and carry in a pouch around his neck for twenty years.”

The glow-worm spark in my tinder grew dull and went out. For a long while I lay there, thinking, awed by the ways of God — so certain, so inscrutable. And understood how at the last all things must be revealed — even the momentary and lightest impulse, and every deepest and most secret thought.

Lying there, I asked of the Master of Life His compassion on us all, and said my tremulous and silent thanks to Him for the dear, sad secret that His mercy had revealed.

And, my lips resting on my mother’s needle-book, I thought of Lois, and how like mine in a measure was her strange history, not yet fully revealed.

“Sagamore, my elder brother?”