_Near the cross, O Lamb of God_---- The beating of the batter dimmed the next line. Then it rose to the close---- _Let me walk from day to day, With its shadow o'er me._ The clamp of the oven door was heard, and silence followed. Sarah was standing on the porch again wiping her hands on her apron, looking away toward the fields. The sun was dipping now into the forest cresting the hills; the white rooster was pacing the outside of the wire enclosure from which he had escaped, in frantic search of an opening to admit him to his perch, his proud head all rumpled in his baffled eagerness, his dangling wattles fiery red. The smoke had found the low places in garden and lawn, where it hovered; a dove wailed from the old orchard, where a pair of them nested year after year; a little child-wind came with soft fingers, and laid them on the waiting woman's hair. Her face quickened with a smile. Joe was coming home from the field. Over his shoulder he carried his hoe, and as he came on toward her in yard-long strides his mother thought of the young soldiers she had seen march away to the war, carrying their guns in that same free confidence of careless strength. His hat was pushed back from his forehead, the collar of his blue flannel shirt was open. His boyish suspenders had been put away in favor of a belt, which was tight-drawn about his slim waist. Very trim and strong, and confident he looked, with the glow of youth in his cheeks, and the spark of happiness in his gray eyes. He was well set in the form of a man now, the months since his imprisonment having brought him much to fasten upon and hold. Joe made the same great splashing that he had made on that spring evening of a year gone by, when he came home from work to step into the shadow which so quickly grew into a storm. But there was no shadow ahead of him this night; there was no somber thing to bend down the high serenity of his happy heart. He stood before the glass hung above the wash bench and smoothed his hair. Mrs. Newbolt was standing by the stove, one of the lids partly removed, some white thing in her hand which she seemed hesitating over consigning to the flames. "What've you got there, Mother?" he asked cheerily as he turned to take his place at the waiting table. "Laws," said she, in some perturbation, her face flushed, holding the thing in her hand up to his better view, "it's that old paper I got from Isom when I--a year ago! I mislaid it when the men was paintin' and plasterin', and I just now run across it stuck back of the coffee jar." For a moment Joe stood behind her, silently, looking over her shoulder at the signature of Isom Chase. "It's no use now," said she, her humiliation over being confronted with this reminder of her past perfidy against her beloved boy almost overwhelming her. "We might as well put it in the stove and git it out of sight."