What had been going on in the Forest? Why was the storm breaking?
But suddenly a verse more heavily marked than the others stayed her:
And a highway shall be there, and a way and it shall be called the way of holiness. The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
Over and over Peneluna read and pondered; more and more she puzzled.
"Land o' love!" she muttered at last. "Now these here words mean something particular. Seems like they must get into me with their meaning if I hold to 'em long enough. Lord! I don't see how folks can enjoy religion when you have to swallow it without tasting it."
But so powerful is suggestion through words, that presently the old woman became hypnotized by them. They sprang out at her like flashes--one by one. "Highway"--she could grasp that. "A way and it shall be called"--these words ran into each other but--the "way" held. "The wayfarer"--well! that was easy; all folks taking to the highway were wayfarers--"though fools shall not err therein."
Peneluna, without realizing it, was on The Highway over which all pass, living, seeing, feeling, and storing up experience. In old Philander's quiet memory-haunted room she was pausing and looking back; groping forward--understanding as she had never understood before!
At times, catching the meaning of what the present held, her old face quivered as a child's does that is lost, and she would _think back_, holding to some word or look that gave her courage again to fix her eyes ahead.
"So! so!" she would nod and mutter. "So! so!" It was like meeting others on The Highway, greeting them, and then going on alone!
That was the hurt of it all--she was alone. If only there had been someone to hold her hand, to help her when she stumbled, but no! she was like a creature in a land of shadowy ghosts. Ghosts whom she knew; who knew her, but they could not linger long with her.
More than the others, Philander persisted, but perhaps that was because of the pencilled words. They were guide-posts he had left for her. And strangest of all, this passing to and fro on The Highway seemed to concern Larry Rivers most of all. Larry, who, during all the years, had meant nothing more to King's Forest than that he was the old doctor's son, Mary-Clare's husband, and Maclin's secret employee.