"What ails you? A fool of a woman took a lighted candle into her hay loft and ruined herself. That happened the night Gaspar found Kitty; and they call it part of their weddin' tower to go there and lend the farmer the money to replace it. Gaspar was for giving it outright, though he's a shrewd feller too, but Kit wouldn't. 'They aren't paupers, and it would hurt their pride,' she said. 'Lend it to them on very easy terms, and they'll respect themselves and you.'" "Well, of course he done it." "Sure. When a man gets a wife as wise as Kitty he'd ought to hark to her." "I'll go and get the calico now, Mercy," said Abel, and left rather suddenly. At nightfall the young couple rode homeward once more, facing the moonlight that whitened the great lake and touched the homely hamlet beside it with an idealizing beauty; and looking upon it, the Sun Maid recalled her vision concerning it and repeated it to her husband. "Ever since then, my Gaspar, the dream comes back to me in some form or shape. But it is always here, right here, that the crowds gather and the great roar of life sounds in my ears. In some strange way we are to be part of it; part of it all. In the dream I see the tall spires of churches, thick and shouldering one another like the trees in the forest behind us." "But, my darling, you have never seen a church of any sort. How, then, can you dream of them?" "That I don't know, unless it is from the pictures in the good Doctor's books. I have learned so much from the pictures always. But, oh! I wish I could make you know some of the delight I felt when first I could read!" "I do know it, sweetheart. I, too, craved knowledge and dug it out for myself, up there in the northern forests, from the few books that came my way and the rare visit of a man who could teach. The first dollar I had that was all my own I put aside for you. That was the beginning of our fortune. The second I invested in a spelling-book. The study, dear, was all that helped me bear the pain of your death. But you are not dead! Rather the most alive of any human being whom I ever saw." "That is true, Gaspar. I _am_ alive. I just quiver with the force that drives me on from one task to another, from one point reached to one beyond. And now, with you beside me, there is no limit, it seems, to the help we can be to every single person who will come within our reach. Wasn't the woman glad and grateful; and don't you see, laddie, that it is better as I planned? You say you have been penurious, saving every cent not expended for your books and necessaries: and yet, now that you are happy again, you are ready to rush to the other extreme and throw your money away in thoughtless charity." She looked so young, so childlike, in the glimmering moonlight that the tall woodsman laughed. "To hear my little Kit teaching her elders!"