"Circumstances and environment have kept them to the pure stock, and neglect has left them untrammelled by civilization and unaided by education. Time and generations of ignorance have deteriorated them, and nature alone--as you were but now admitting--has hardly served to arrest the process by the survival of the fittest." "Nature--yes--how do you account for it? I have been in the grandest, most wonderful places, I venture to say, that are to be found on earth, and among all the glory that nature can throw around a man, he is still, if left to himself, more bestial than the beasts. He destroys and defaces and defiles nature; he kills--for the mere sake of killing--more than he needs; he enslaves himself to his appetites and passions, follows them wildly, yields to them recklessly; and destroys himself and all the beauty around him that he can reach, wantonly. Why, Bishop Towers, sometimes I've gone out and looked up at the stars above me and wondered which was real, they and the marvellous beauty all around me, or the three hundred reeking humanity sleeping in the camp beneath them. Sometimes it seemed as if only hell were real, and the camp was a bit of it let loose to mock at heaven." "We mustn't forget that what is transitory is not a part of God's eternity of spirit and truth." "Oh, yes, yes! But we do forget. And some transitory things are mighty hard to endure, especially if they must endure for a lifetime." David was thinking of Cassandra and what in all probability would be her doom. He had not mentioned her name, but he had come down with the intention of learning all he could about her, and if possible to whom she was "promised." He feared it might be the low-browed, handsome youth bending over the garden beds beyond the hedge, and his heart rebelled and cried out fiercely within him, "What a waste, what a waste!" Betty Towers, intent on her sewing, felt the thrill that intensified David's tone, and she, too, thought of Cassandra. She dropped her work in her lap and looked earnestly in her husband's face. "James, I feel just as Doctor Thryng does--when I think of some things. When I see a tragedy coming to a human soul, I feel that a lifetime of transitory things like that is hard to endure. Fancy, James! Think of Cassandra. You know her, Doctor Thryng, of course. They live just below your place. She is the Widow Farwell's daughter, but her name is Merlin." David arrested his impatient stride and, drawing a chair near her, dropped into it. "What about her?" he said. "What is the tragedy?" "I think, Betty, the hills must keep their own secrets," said the bishop. His little wife compressed her lips, glanced over the hedge at the young man who happened at the moment to have straightened from his bent position among the plants and was gazing at their guest, then resumed her sewing. "Is it something I must not be told?" asked David, quietly. "But I may have my suspicions. Naturally we can't help that."