“Then, one day, by the strangest chance, her people found her—her own people—and so kind and noble were they that they at once acknowledged her and took her to her own kingdom—though it might all have been theirs had they not been so good and true that it was a pleasure to them to do right and to divide it between themselves and her. They did all they could to make the princess happy. The great house and the garden, the fields and woods, were for her to enjoy. She was taken on a journey to beautiful lands. She was given tutors and books, gowns and jewels, a horse after her own heart and many luxuries which it would take too long to name. But there was one thing she did not have, and that was the right to make her own choice of the sort of life she wished to lead. She must stay within her kingdom, she must marry the prince that her kin should choose, and she must live as became one of her rank. “Now it so happened that the manner in which the princess had been reared did not make it possible for her to consent to this, although she wished from the bottom of her heart to pay full duty to these kind and true kinsmen of hers. But she had a higher duty yet than that, and that was to be true to her own soul. Day by day and hour by hour this truth grew upon her: that it would be a great sin for her not to be what she was made to be. ‘Be what thou art’ she had once read in a book. ‘Be what thou art.’ She could not forget it. It seemed to her that there was great wisdom in that saying. “So she has come to tell her dear kinspeople that she must let the fortune go. The houses and lands, the streams and forests, are dear to her, but they are not so dear as liberty. No, not nearly so dear. But there is one thing that is dear to her beyond words, and that is the love of her kinspeople, and that she never means to let go if she can hold on to it. Whatever the cords are that tied them and her together, she wants to make stronger and faster, for as long as she lives she will love them and be grateful to them. “Yet she must be free. Will they understand, and forgive?” Then I cried. I said I wouldn’t, that I mustn’t; but I did. Not with sobs. No, but those miserable tears simply poured out of my eyes over my cheeks and I couldn’t stop them. And Aunt Lorena cried, too. Only she cried slowly. She sat with her long hands clasped and let the big, lazy tears roll down her cheeks. As for Uncle David, he grew red and then white, and for what seemed a long time I stood there, waiting, until after a long time Uncle David said: “Come to me, child,” and I went to him, and kneeled down by him, and he brushed back my hair and kissed me on the forehead. “You were never,” he said in a voice that trembled a little, “so true a Knox as you are to-day, my dear.”