Then they went on, but the heat penetrated to Orville’s very marrow and he seemed to faint under it, yet he always kept struggling forward.  The burning sands cooked his bleeding feet, but the anguish did not halt him.  Torrents of tears and sweat rolled down from him, but his hunger for the Cross made him forget.  To his pain-racked body it felt as if the Cross gave out the great heat, but Orville was more grateful than ever for it.

“Does this heat really come from the Cross, Michael?” he asked.

“Yes, from the Cross, master,” said Michael, “for this is The Plain of Sinful Things, and the Cross is the Sun of Justice.”

Then like a flash Orville began to understand, even as Michael had understood from the beginning.  Michael saw the change in him.  His face became more radiant before he spoke.

“Master,” he said, “my service is almost over.  It was my prayer constantly that I could return your goodness to me and mine; but on earth you were rich and I was poor.  Here, master, in The Land of the Dead, I am rich and you are poor.  God let me make my pilgrimage with you.  The child you buried when I had nothing, bore you over The Chasm of Neglected Duties, where your hardest lot was to be found.  You did not even see another Chasm, which almost all meet, The Chasm of Forgotten Things, for the prayers gathered in a little chapel which you builded in a wilderness, a charity you forgot the day after you did it, filled up the Chasm before you came to it.  Here on The Plain of Sinful Things we would naturally separate, for I had never wilfully sinned against God.  But you needed me, and He let me stay.  Master, your burden has fallen from you.”

It was true.  Orville was standing erect, with his eyes looking straight at The Flaming Cross, which did not blind him.  His burden had vanished, and his face had almost the radiance of Michael’s.

“The Cross is near you now, master.  Look, It comes toward you.  Your pilgrimage is ending.”

Orville could see It coming, gently and slowly.  The Plain was now all behind him, and yet it seemed as if he had scarcely gone over more than a few yards of it.  The harping of a thousand harps was not sweet enough for the music that filled the air.  Like the falling of many waters in the distance came the promise of coolness to Orville’s parched throat and his burning lips.  His breast heaved and he felt his heart, full of Love, break in his bosom; but with it broke the bond of Sin, and he knew that he was dead, indeed, to earth, as out from the stained cover came his purified soul.