The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of
paper, nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit,
something straight from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it
to be a thief? He met the question at last, face to face,
wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his forehead. God made
this money--the fresh air, too--for his children's use. He
never made the difference between poor and rich. The Something
who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had
a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew
that!

There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson
and purple flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water
below the bridge, had somehow given him a glimpse of another
world than this,--of an infinite depth of beauty and of quiet
somewhere,--somewhere, a depth of quiet and rest and love.
Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had sunk
quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching
the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were
steeped in its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched
smoke-clouds opened like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas
of crimson mist, waves of billowy silver veined with blood-
scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light. Wolfe's
artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of that other
world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world of
Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and
thine, of mill-owners and mill hands?

A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A