“I make no defence—­believe all that you say.  But had you loved me, I might have been all this, and it would have been nothing.”

With this I walked slowly out of the arbor, but Georgiana stood beside me.  Her light touch was on my arm.

“Let me see things clearly!”

“You have a lifetime in which to see things clearly,” I answered.  “How can that concern me now?” And I passed on into the house.

During the morning I wandered restless.  For a while I lay on the grass down behind the pines.  How deep and clear are the covered springs of memory!  All at once it was a morning in my boyhood on my father’s farm.  I, a little Saul of Tarsus among the birds, was on my way to the hedge-rows and woods, as to Damascus, breathing out threatenings and slaughter.  Then suddenly the childish miracle, which no doubt had been preparing silently within my nature, wrought itself out; for from the distant forest trees, from the old orchard, from thicket and fence, from the wide green meadows, and down out of the depths of the blue sky itself, a vast chorus of innocent creatures sang to my newly opened ears the same words:  “Why persecutest thou me?” One sang it with indignation; another with remonstrance; still another with resignation; others yet with ethereal sadness or wild elusive pain.  Once more the house-wren aloud, “per-se-cu-test—­per-se-cu-test&md
ash;­per-se-cu-test—­per-se-cu-test!” And as I peeped into the brush-pile, again the brown thrush, building within, said, “thou—­thou—­thou!”

Through all the years since I had thought myself changed, and craved no greater glory than to be accounted the chief of their apostles.  But now I was stained once more with the old guilt, and once more I could hear the birds in my yard singing that old, old chorus against man’s inhumanity.

Towards the middle of the afternoon I went away across the country—­by any direction; I cared not what.  On my way back I passed through a large rear lot belonging to my neighbors, and adjoining my own, in which is my stable.  There has lately been imported into this part of Kentucky from England the much-prized breed of the beautiful white Berkshire.  As I crossed the lot, near the milk-trough, ash-heap, and paring of fruit and vegetables thrown from my neighbor’s kitchen, I saw a litter of these pigs having their awkward sport over some strange red plaything, which one after another of them would shake with all its might, root and tear at, or tread into greater shapelessness.  It was all there was left of him.

I entered my long yard.  If I could have been spared the sight of that!  The sun was setting.  Around me was the last peace and beauty of the world.  Through a narrow avenue of trees I could see my house, and on its clustering vines fell the angry red of the sun darting across the cool green fields.

The last hour of light touches the birds as it touches us.  When they sing in the morning, it is with the happiness of the earth; but as the shadows fall strangely about them, and the helplessness of the night comes on, their voices seem to be lifted up like the loftiest poetry of the human spirit, with sympathy for realities and mysteries past all understanding.