Adolph Schneider had gone on his way but a few moments before. The school-master still felt the sting of his last words—an injunction to find the Bible within the next fortnight. Gerson Brandt had spent all his unemployed waking moments in trying to account for the disappearance of the big book. He felt sure that there was no boy in the village mischievous enough to steal it, and no outsider except Everett had been within the boundaries of Zanah for many a week. Instinctively he knew that the colonists were judging him unkindly, for even in Zanah jealousies and rivalries were not unknown. In all his years of colony life he had escaped criticism, because he had been the one elder untouched by personal ambition. His gentleness and sweetness of nature had made even the most selfish and disagreeable person his friend, for no one in all Zanah had performed the friendly services that belonged to the record made by the school-master of the colony. Presently he turned his face towards the window and looked out upon the summer landscape. The day seemed strangely silent. The late summer already presaged the coming autumn. The birds had long ceased their singing. There was not even the hum of a lazy insect. A sense of loneliness crept over this man, accustomed to the peculiar isolation of life in Zanah. He half realized that the loss of the Bible meant to him, in a certain sense, a cutting off of a daily association of thought that bound him to Walda. His mind had hardly turned towards the girl before he heard her light footstep as she crossed the threshold. When he saw her framed in the doorway that opened out on the little porch, he felt foolishly glad, but although he rose to his feet he did not advance to meet her. “Ah, Gerson Brandt, something is troubling thee,” said Walda. “For fully two minutes I have been watching thee from the porch. What is in thy mind to rob thee thus of peace?” “Nay, Walda, my peace is not gone, I trust,” said the school-master; but he paused, as if the assertion made him cognizant that he might not be speaking the whole truth. “I have been thinking much about the loss of my Bible.” “Yea, that is very strange,” said Walda, standing before his desk, and looking up into his eyes with an inquiring glance. “I cannot understand what could befall it.” “If it cannot be found, my honor is touched,” said Gerson Brandt, and there was something like a quiver on his sensitive lips. “There are those in Zanah who will count it against me, because I put overmuch work upon the book and grew to hold it as my best possession.” “Nay, nay, Gerson Brandt, the people love thee, and they will remember the injunction that they must not judge one another.” Gerson Brandt stepped from the high platform. Motioning towards a bench in front of the window, he said: “Sit here near me, Walda; I would speak to thee now alone, since there may not come another chance before thy day of inspiration.”