'Of course. I speak only of the seeming. But I like the fight, and I like the struggle. I like to measure battlements and prepare my scaling ladders, and lead a forlorn hope. It suits me, I believe.' 'Battlements?' Hazel repeated. 'Do you mean heights of difficulty?' —'Guarded by depths of sin,' said Dr. Arthur. Hazel looked from one to the other. Yes, she could like that too, if she were a man. How much could she do, being a woman? 'And that is all seeming too, Arthur,' his friend went on. '_Really_, the fighter need never be out of that "feste Burg." I was thinking just now, not only that work looks easy, but that it looks small. Individual effort, I mean; the utmost that any one man can do. It is a mere speck. The living waters that shall be "a river to swim in," are very shallow yet; and where the fishers are to stand and cast their nets, it is a waste of barrenness. You have never been on the shores of the Dead Sea, Arthur; you do not know how a little thread of green on the mountain side shews where a spring of sweet water runs down through the waste.' 'What then, Mr. Rollo?' said Wych Hazel. 'It is such a tiny thread of life upon the universal brown death.' 'Is that what the world looks like to you?' said Hazel, wondering. 'And the work is even far smaller than that, if you look at it in its minute details. Did you ever read the life of Agnes Jones, Arthur?' 'Yes.' 'Prim lent me the book; and I found a good word in it the other day. The writer says, I cannot give you the exact words,—"If we do every little thing that comes to us, God may out of our many littles make a great whole." Therein lies the very truth of our work. It is so in Morton Hollow. Not building schoolhouses or making villages; anybody can do that; it is the word of interest to one, the word of sympathy to another; the holding a broken arm; giving help and refreshment in individual cases. Love, in short, like the sun, working softly and everywhere. As those threads of green on the mountain side are made up of multitudinous tiny leaves and mosses, nourished by countless invisible drops of spray.' 'Working in all sorts of ways'—said the Doctor; while Hazel sat thinking of the green that was beginning to line the banks of Morton Hollow. 'You may notice that a real spring goes literally wherever it can. Men may wall it in with stone channels, or force it into the air; but let it alone, it follows every possible opening. The deep main stream, and the little side rills, and the single drops that go each to a single leaf.' Rollo looked up and smiled. 'There is Gyda coming to fetch you, Hazel.' 'Well,' said Hazel. 'And you will go on talking all sorts of things that I ought to hear.' She rose up and stood looking down into the fire. The other two rose also and stood looking at her. It was a pretty picture. Gyda, a little apart, watched them all with her little bright eyes.