Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/280

 beneath the river? For one brief moment he faltered; the thought came to him of taking this broken-hearted, sinful creature by the hand and leaping with her into the flood. But the moment passed, the temptation was overcome, and he lifted his voice and spoke to the kneeling, weeping woman, about whose desperate beauty the moonlight played fancifully. He spoke to her as only those who are gifted with the living speech can speak,—words which can no more be written down and read again than can the subtle power which animates them be prisoned and made material. Those who have heard the sentences of one of these seers among men never forget what they felt in hearing and answering them. For it is their gift to appeal to the best and no blest thoughts in men's hearts, howsoever deeply these thoughts may be buried under sin and selfishness. The hidden water for which men thirst lies in the depths of their own souls, and the living word is the divining-rod which points out its source, so oft forgotten or ignored.

And when he was at last silent, and the weeping woman had risen and laid her hand in his and bade him do with her as he would, the man knew that the battle had been fought and won for her, and eke for him. And so it is that we are sometimes preserved from falling into a sin by the act of saving another from the very