Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/842

834 one of those long rears during which she was looking for him, and that he came scourged by conscience to ask forgiveness of his diabolic vengeance.

I wish that I might write,—which were far easier, if it were but fact,—that all the patience and courage of the Pure Heart of Diver’s Bay, all the constancy that sought to bring order and decency and reverence into the cabins there, met at last with another external reward than merely beholding, as the children grew up to their duties and she drew near to death, the results of all her teaching; that those results were attended by another, also an external reward; that the youth, who came down like an angel to fill her place when she was gone, had walked into her house one morning, and surprised her, as the Angel Gabriel once surprised the world, by his glad tidings. I wish, that, instead of kneeling down beside her grave in the sand, and vowing there, “ Oh, mother! I, who have found no mother but thee in all the world, am here, in thy place, to strive as thou didst for the ignorant and the helpless and unclean,” he had thrown his arms around her living presence, and vowed that vow in spite of Hondo Emmins, and all the world beside.

But it seems that the gate is strait, and the path is ever narrow, and the hill is difficult. And the kinds of victory are various, and the badges of the conquerors are not all one. And the pure heart can wear its pearl as purely, and more safely, in the heavens, where the white array is spotless,—where the desolate heart shall be no more forsaken, —where the, who stands waiting the Bride, says, “ Come, for all things are now ready !”—where the makes glad. Pure Pearl of Diver’s Bay! not for the cheap sake of any mortal romance will I grieve to write that He has plucked thee from the deep to reckon thee among His pearls of price.