He raised his head to the sky. Standing against the sun in his white robe, his face transfigured with a wonderful smile, he looked like some Crusader giving himself into the arms of the Virgin. Above him stretched the green leafy branch of a tree that rustled faintly in the breeze. A little bird sat on a twig and chirped. And still above stretched the pure blue sky with its white fleece clouds. Henry Spencer looked at it all—life, the little bird, the sky, the green leaves—and smiled; smiled as I have never seen a man smile before. They strapped his ankles and then the sheriff adjusted the rope around his neck with great care. His political future was dependent on his task. Spencer resumed talking. He recited two long psalms with never a wrong word, and I who had listened to him five months ago sat astounded. His voice, his accent, everything about him had changed. A theologian could have rendered the psalms no more accurately. Then he looked at the sky again. I felt that before his eyes the clouds rolled away and God revealed himself, a gigantic figure seated on a golden throne. I felt that he saw the cherubs and the angels he had read of in the scriptures, perceived the jewelled streets and the harpists and Christ waiting with outstretched arms and forgiveness. “Yes, my friends,” he went on, “I am not afraid, for I have given myself to Christ, pure in spirit, strong in faith.” He quoted from the Bible. “See, I smile at it all, for believe me, O Lord, I am happy.” The sheriff had lifted the white hood to the man’s head and was beginning to adjust it. The smile never left his face, the light that blazed from his eyes never dimmed. “I am going to heaven,” he said as they settled the hood on his head, “and I want to say only one more thing before I go. My friends, as I stand here, I tell you I am innocent of the murder of Mrs. Allison Rexroat.” And they hanged him. The truth? The human ego is too weak for truth. What do you say, my friend? We carry faithfully what we are given, on hard shoulders, over rough mountains! And when perspiring, we are told: “Yea, life is hard to bear!” But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason is that he carrieth too many strange things on his shoulders. Like the camel he kneeleth down and alloweth the heavy load to be put on his back.—_Nietzsche._ Romain Rolland ELLEN KEY (_Authorized translation from the Swedish by Mamah Bouton Borthwick. Copyright, 1914._) I.