Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/77

Rh was beginning to understand. There is a just mercilessness in an aroused God. Hazen Kinch was driven to questions.

“Why—didn’t Marshey fetch it?” he asked.

She said slowly: “They would not trust him—at the store.”

His mouth twitched, he raised his hands.

“The money!” he cried. “The money! What did he do with that?”

“He said,” the woman answered, “that he lost it—in your office; lost the money there.”

After a little the old money-lender leaned far back like a man wrenched with agony. His body was contorted, his face was terrible. His dry mouth opened wide.

He screamed!

Halfway up the hill to my house I stopped to look back and all round. The vast hills in their snowy garments looked down upon the land, upon the house of Hazen Kinch. Still and silent and inscrutable.

I knew now that a just and brooding God dwelt among these hills.