"And you buried him?" asked Virginia, softly.
"Yes, an' the fault was mostly mine, Jinnie. I ain't had no way to make it up to Peggy, but there's lots of to-morrows."
"You'll make her happy then?" ejaculated the girl.
"Yes," said Lafe, "an' I might a done it then, but I wouldn't listen to the voices."
A look of bewildered surprise crossed the girl's face. Were they spirit voices, the voices in the pines, of which Lafe was speaking? She'd ask him.
"God's voices out of Heaven," said he, in answer to her query. "They come every night, but I wouldn't listen, till one day my boy was took. Then I heard another voice, demandin' me to tell folks what was what about God. But I was afraid an' a--coward."
The cobbler lapsed into serious thought, while Virginia moved a small nail back and forth on the floor with the toe of her shoe. She wouldn't cry again, but something in the low, sad voice made her throat ache. After the man had been quiet for a long time, she pressed him with: "After that, Lafe, what then?"
"After that," repeated the cobbler, straightening his shoulders, "after that my legs went bad an' then--an' then----"
Virginia, very pale, went to the cobbler, and laid her head against his shoulder.
"An' then, child," he breathed huskily, "I believed, an' I know, as well as I'm livin', God sent his Christ for everybody; that in the lovin' father"--Lafe raised his eyes--"there's no line drawed 'tween Jews an' Gentiles. They're all alike to Him. Only some're goin' one road an' some another to get to Him, that's all."
These were quite new ideas to Virginia. In all her young life no one had ever conversed with her of such things. True, from her hill home on clear Sunday mornings she could hear the church bells ding-dong their hoarse welcome to the farmers, but she had never been inside the church doors. Now she regretted the lost opportunity. She wished to grasp the cobbler's meaning. Noting her tense expression, Grandoken continued: "It was only a misunderstandin' 'tween a few Jews when they nailed the Christ to the cross. Why, a lot of Israelites back there believed in 'im. I'm one of them believin' Jews, Jinnie."
"I wish I was a Jew, cobbler," sighed Jinnie. "I'd think the same as you then, wouldn't I?"
"Oh, you don't have to be a Jew to believe," returned Lafe. "It's as easy to do as 'tis to roll off'n a log."
This lame man filled her young heart with a deep longing to help him and to have him help her.