At last he spoke. “Carpenter of Nazareth! Man as we are men, but a Prince in the house of Moral Genius! Born with thy heritage, also, of an ancient, savage faith, in thine ears, still, old saws of doom, on thy lips at times hard sayings of that elder world, in thy mind, yet unresolved, more than one of the ancient riddles.... But thou thyself, through all the realm of thy being, rising into the clearer light, lifting where we all shall lift one day, transfiguring life!... Genius and Golden Heart and Pure Courage and Immortal Love.... Condemned by a Church, handed over by it to the secular arm, gone forth to thy martyr’s death—and still, Sage and Seer! misunderstood and persecuted,—and still thou standest with the martyrs ... slain afresh by many, and not least by those who call themselves thine. Wisdom, freedom, love.... Love—Love—Love!” The fox-gloves nodded around him. He drew toward him a long stem and softly touched, one by one, the purple bells. “Freedom—love!... Thou flower! When shall we see how thou flowest into me and I into thee?” He let the purple stem swing back, and with his hands about his knees again regarded the gibbet; then, when some minutes had gone by, rose and pursued his way. Another half-hour and he came to a place where three roads met. A passing shepherd boy told him the name was Heron’s Cross-Roads. It was a lonely place, wold and stunted wood, and in an angle, amid heath and briar, was set a blackened stake. Aderhold went across to it. In the wood was a rudely cut name, with a word or two below; the stake was set through the heart of a suicide. Nettles were about it, and some one passing had thrown an empty and broken jug of earthenware. It lay in shards. Aderhold knelt, gathered them together, and rising, laid the heap beneath the hedge. Back upon the highway, he turned his face again to the town. It was a long way to the Oak Grange, and Master Hardwick was concerned if the house were not closed and fast at a most early hour. _Heron’s Cross-Roads._ As Aderhold walked an association arose with the name. Heron—that was the name of the old man who owned the cottage on the edge of Hawthorn Forest. He was not there now; the cottage had been shut up and tenantless since early summer. He and his daughter were gone, Will had told him, on a long visit to the old man’s brother, the earl’s huntsman who lived in the castle wood above the town. No one knew when they would be back. Most of their furnishings and household things had been loaned here or there. The dairy woman had taken their cow, some one else the beehives. Heron! He had a moment’s drifting vision of the girl gathering faggots in the forest. It passed and the present day and landscape took its place. Soon he came again to the rise of ground and the gibbet so stark against the blue. He hesitated, then paused, resting as he had rested before upon a stone sunk in the wayside growth.