“Yes, it would.  And something else:  there’s one hymn they sing more than any other; it’s Canaan’s favorite.  Do you know what it is?”

“Is it `Rescue the Perishing’?”

“That’s it. `Rescue the Perishing’!” he cried, and repeating the words again, gave forth a peal of laughter so hearty that it brought tears to his eyes. “`Rescue the perishing’!”

At first she did not understand his laughter, but, after a moment, she did, and joined her own to it, though with a certain tremulousness.

“It is funny, isn’t it?” said Joe, wiping the moisture from his eyes.  Then all trace of mirth left him.  “Is it really you, sitting here and laughing with me, Ariel?”

“It seems to be,” she answered, in a low voice.  “I’m not at all sure.”

“You didn’t think, yesterday afternoon,” he began, almost in a whisper,—­” you didn’t think that I had failed to come because I—­” He grew very red, and shifted the sentence awkwardly:  “I was afraid you might think that I was—­that I didn’t come because I might have been the same way again that I was when—­when I met you at the station?”

“Oh no!” she answered, gently.  “No.  I knew better.”

“And do you know,” he faltered, “that that is all over?  That it can never happen again?”

“Yes, I know it,” she returned, quickly.

“Then you know a little of what I owe you.”

“No, no,” she protested.

“Yes,” he said.  “You’ve made that change in me already.  It wasn’t hard—­it won’t be—­though it might have been if—­if you hadn’t come soon.”

“Tell me something,” she demanded.  “If these people had not sent for you yesterday, would you have come to Judge Pike’s house to see me?  You said you would try.”  She laughed a little, and looked away from him.  “I want to know if you would have come.”

There was a silence, and in spite of her averted glance she knew that he was looking at her steadily.  Finally, “Don’t you know?” he said.

She shook her head and blushed faintly.

“Don’t you know?” he repeated.

She looked up and met his eyes, and thereupon both became very grave.  “Yes, I do,” she answered.  “You would have come.  When you left me at the gate and went away, you were afraid.  But you would have come.”

“Yes,—­I’d have come.  You are right.  I was afraid at first; but I knew,” he went on, rapidly, “that you would have come to the gate to meet me.”

“You understood that?” she cried, her eyes sparkling and her face flushing happily.

“Yes.  I knew that you wouldn’t have asked me to come,” he said, with a catch in his voice which was half chuckle, half groan, “if you hadn’t meant to take care of me!  And it came to me that you would know how to do it.”

She leaned back in her chair, and again they laughed together, but only for a moment, becoming serious and very quiet almost instantly.