"Yes, I didn’t mean to come at this hour of night, but as I was riding by just now, on my way home to see my mother, who is not exactly well, I noticed your door open, and not seeing you in sight, I hitched my horse up the road a piece and came back and watched at the gate. Then not hearing any sound, and knowing you never go to bed with your door open, I went in. Then you bet I _was_ scared. Things do once in a while happen here in the mountains, and—" "Oh, well, nothing was the matter with me," Ann smiled. "Besides, I can take care of myself." "I know that, too," he said. "I’m glad to get this chance to talk to you. I understand that mother is not as ill as they thought she was, and I’ll have to catch the first train back to Atlanta in the morning. I’m doing pretty well down there, Aunt Ann." "I know it, Luke, and I’m glad," Ann said, her mind still on the things she had just witnessed. "But you haven’t yet forgiven me for giving my people that farm. I can see that by your manner." "I thought it was foolish," she replied. "But that’s because you simply don’t know all about it, Aunt Ann," he insisted. "I don’t want to make you mad again; but really I would do that thing over again and again. It has helped me more than anything I ever did. You see, you’ve been thinking on one line all your life and, of late years, I have been on quite another. You are a great woman, Aunt Ann, but you still believe that the only way to fight is to hit back. You have been hitting back for years, and may keep on at it for a while, but you’ll see the truth one of these days, and you’ll actually love your neighbors—even your vilest enemies. You’ll come to see—your big brain will simply _have_ to grasp it—that your retaliation, being obedient to bad life-laws, is as blamable as the antagonism of your enemies. The time will come when your very suffering will be the medium through which you will view and pity their sordid narrowness. Then you’ll appear to them in their long darkness as a blazing light; they will look up to you as a thing divine; they will fall blinded at your feet; they will see your soul as it has always been, pure white and dazzlingly bright, and look upon you as the very impersonation of—" "Huh, don’t be a fool!" Ann sank on the edge of the porch, her eyes fixed angrily on the ground. "You are ignorant of what you are talking about—as ignorant as a new-born baby. You are a silly dreamer, boy. Your life is an easy, flowery one, and you can’t look into a dark, rugged one like mine. If God is at the head of all things, he put evil here as well as the good, and to-night I’m thankful for the evil. I’m tasting it, I tell you, and it’s sweet, sweet, sweet!" "Ah, I know," King sighed. "You are trying to make yourself believe you are glad Mrs. Hemingway is in such agony over her affliction." "I didn’t say anything about her affliction." Ann stared half fearfully into his honest face.