“It has been a bitter, cruel lesson that I have read to you,” he went on. “I am a harsh old tyrant when my feelings are stirred. But I would have defended just as stoutly your own little girl if she were here alone and you were sleeping over yonder there on the hill where her mother is.” He took her unwilling hand, and thereafter the eloquence that trembled on his lips was the soul outpouring of a man who has lived the life of human justice and generosity that he preached--and the woman knew it. With the skill of one who understood what quality of human nature lay under that tough New England exterior, he probed to the depths of her being, pulled away all the husks of selfishness that the years had piled, layer on layer, and reached the mother instinct. “Esther,” he said at last, “don’t you think you’ll look better with that softness you have now in your eyes when your ’Cilia meets you at the gate of Heaven? Why don’t you practise that look for the rest of your life? But you need something to practise on! There are lots of things that are going to waste up at your house since ’Cilia died. There’s love and tenderness, most of all. There’s the heart of a faithful man who has been yoked with you all these years, dragging at your mutual burdens. He wants a little love, that’s all. He wants that love from you, from no other. The two of you need something to soften your hard natures, something in common. You lost that when your girl died.” He hastened down the aisle. The little school-ma’am struggled a bit in his grasp, but with Sylvena Willard’s pat on her cheek and comforting word in her ear she went with him. “Now, Esther, what have you to say to this poor little chicken--this motherless little girl? Look into her eyes! What have you to say?” The woman seemed to be awakening from some dream. She gazed about over the assemblage. Her eyes returned to the shrinking girl before her. “It was only the same way that my own father was good to me, Mrs. Dunham,” murmured the schoolma’am, tears streaking her cheeks. “I thought it was you that sent some of the little things, till you---you----” Sobs checked her. “Esther!” pleaded the Squire, “it’s awful lonesome up to your house!” The whole picture of her homeless misery that afternoon blended with the strange new light that had entered her soul. She clutched his arm and pulled him down, whispered a few words into his ear, and then caught the little schoolma’am in an embrace that proved that motherhood was burning in her once again. The Squire nodded his head and smiled sagely. Sylvena Willard was standing at the foot of the aisle as he passed, mist in her eyes, but a smile of earnest approbation on her lips that made his heart beat fast. “It is a miracle, Phineas,” she whispered. “Oh, no; it’s in all of ’em--in all of us, if you only know how to get at it,” he returned softly.