He had fought, had fallen, had
conquered and risen again; always advancing toward the light, but
always bearing on his garment the smell of the fire, and upon his hands
the stain of the pitch. And now, because he was safe at last and could
look back upon those things, should he condemn another? Would not Amy
also conquer, and when she _had_ conquered, by what right could he
demand in her that which he had not in himself? Christ would as freely
welcome her as He had welcomed him. Christianity held out as many
glorious hopes for her as for him. Her past might be past as well as
his. Why should he not shut the door upon it forever, and live only
in the present and future? And then his mind fell to picturing what
that future, with Amy by his side, might be. They were equals now,
before God and their own consciences. What should he care for the
world?
And so the fight went on in the battle-ground of his inner life, until
the whistle blew a long blast for the station, and looking from the
window of the car, he saw the smelter smoke and dust of Boyd City.
CHAPTER XXV
John Barton and his wife, Anna, with whom Amy was to make her home for
a while, could fully sympathize with the girl in her sad position,
though one would never dream that the quiet, reserved John knew more
of life than of his pigs and cattle, or that his jolly-faced, motherly
companion had ever been beyond the quiet fields that surrounded her
simple dwelling. Years before, they had been rescued from the world
in which Amy had so nearly perished, by the same kind hand that had
been stretched out to her, the Salvation Army; and now well on in
middle life, happy and prosperous, they showed scarce a trace of the
trouble that had driven them to labor on a farm.
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