* * * * * The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge; Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.

"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat too near the earth."

He looked up.

"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.

"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done. Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it snugly from wind and water.

Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in--there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his presence, and she inquired softly: "Who's it, Bles?"

"The mother of God," he answered reverently.

"And why does she hold a lily?"

"It stands for purity--she was a good woman."

"With a baby," Zora added slowly.

"Yes--" said Bles, and then more quickly--"It is the Christ Child--God's baby."

"God is the father of all the little babies, ain't He, Bles?"

"Why, yes--yes, of course; only this little baby didn't have any other father."

"Yes, I know one like that," she said,--and then she added softly: "Poor little Christ-baby."

Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying: "How white she is; she's as white as the lily, Bles; but--I'm sorry she's white--Bles, what's purity--just whiteness?"

Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her innocence something holy.

"It means," he stammered, groping for meanings--"it means being good--just as good as a woman knows how."

She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly: "Not better--not better than she knows, but just as good, in--lying and stealing and--and everything?"

Bles smiled.

"No--not better than she knows, but just as good."

She trembled happily.

"I'm--pure," she said, with a strange little breaking voice and gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.




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