Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/185

 Molly-oh!" He burst into sobs, and shivering, made his way back into his father's darkening, empty house.

At the breakfast table the next morning his father looked at him neutrally. "This day you shall go to salt the sheep in the Miller lot," he announced, "and you may have until the hour before sundown to walk in the wood."

"Oh, father, really!"

"That is what I said," repeated the minister dryly, pushing away from the table.

After the boy had gone, carrying the bag of salt and the little package of his noonday meal, the minister sighed heavily. "I fear my weak heart inclines me to too great softness to our son." To his wife he cried out a moment later, "Oh, that some instance of the wrath of Jehovah could come before us now, while our son's spirit is softened. Deacon Truitt said yesterday that one more visitation would save him."

Nathaniel walked along soberly, his eyes on the road at his feet, his face quite pale, a sleepless night evidently behind him. He came into the birches without noticing them at first, and when he looked up he was for a moment so taken by surprise that he was transfigured. The valley at his feet shimmered like an opal through the slender white pillars of the trees. The wood was like a many-columned chapel, unroofed and open to the sunlight. Nathaniel gave a cry of rapture, and dropped the bag of salt. "Oh!" he cried, stretching out his arms, and then again, "Oh!"

For a moment he stood so, caught into a joy that was