"Son," said his Mother, as she also rose and stood facing him with the late afternoon sun falling straight into her face which, lit by the light without and a fire within, shone with a wonderful radiance. "Son, don't you know these old Harpeth Hills have looked down in they day on many a woman open her arms, take a burden to her heart and start on a long journey up to the Master's everlasting hills? Sometimes it have been disgrace, or a lifelong loneliness, or her man hunted out into the night by the law. I have laid still-born children into my sisters' arms, and I've washed the blood from the wounds in women's murdered sons, but I ain't never seen no woman deny her Lord yet and I don't look to see this little sister of my heart refuse her cup. I'll tell her, for it's my part--but Tom Mayberry, see that you stand to her when your time comes, as it surely will." "Don't you know, Mother, that I would lay down my life to do the least thing for her?" he asked, with the suffering drawing his young face into stern, hard lines. "But to do the one thing for her I might have done has been denied me," he added bitterly. "No, Tom, there's one thing left to you to give her. Sympathy is God's box of precious ointment and see that you break yours over her heart this day. Now, I'm a-going down Providence Road to meet her and I know the Lord will help me to the right words when the time comes. I leave His blessing with you, boy!" And she turned and left him with his softened eyes looking up into her calm face. Then for a long hour Mother Mayberry worked quietly among her dependent feather folk and as she worked, her gentle face had its brooding mother-look and her lips moved as she comforted and fortified herself with snatches of prayer for the journey through the deep waters, on which she was to lead this child of her affection. After the last tangle had been straightened out, each brood settled in comfortable quarters and the cause of all quarrels arbitrated, she walked to the front gate and stood looking down the Road.