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“Who is it on the load of hay?” asked Christopher.

“Ellen,” replied Myrtle.

“Oh!” said Christopher. “She looked like an angel of the Lord, come to take up the burden I had dropped while I went to learn of Him.”

“Be you feeling pretty well, Christopher?” asked Myrtle. She thought that what her husband had said was odd, but he looked well, and he might have said it simply because he was a man.

Christopher put his arm around Myrtle. “I am better than I ever was in my whole life, Myrtle, and I’ve got more courage to work now than I had when I was young. I had to go away and get rested, but I’ve got rested for all my life. We shall get along all right as long as we live.”

“Ellen and the minister are going to get married come Christmas,” said Myrtle.

“She is lucky. He is a man that can see with the eyes of other people,” said Christopher.

It was after the hay had been unloaded and Christopher had been shown the garden full of lusty vegetables, and told of the great crop with no drawback, that he and the minister had a few minutes alone together at the gate.

“I want to tell you, Mr. Wheaton, that I am settled in my mind now. I shall never complain again, no matter what happens. I have found that all the good things and all the bad things that come to a man who tries to do right are just to prove to him that he is on the right path. They are just the flowers and sunbeams, and the rocks and snakes, too, that mark the way. And — I have found out more than that. I have found out the answer to my ‘why?'”

“What is it?” asked Stephen, gazing at him curiously from the wonder-height of his own special happiness.

“I have found out that the only way to heaven for the children of men is through the earth,” said Christopher.