"Zora--" he gasped, "how--how did you do it?"
She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:
"Dreams--dreams--it's all dreams here, I tells you."
Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less assurance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight, tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm about her shoulders and murmured:
All day Saturday and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed, on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon. Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick, breathless fear.
"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"
"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."
"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole it."
"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take anything that doesn't belong to you."
She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far back in the depths of her deep eyes.
"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.
"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."
"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."
"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.
"Yes--He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."
Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said solemnly as though saying a prayer:
"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal--and--" she looked at him in startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he had preached enough.