The well in the desert
his thought still ran on. “The deacon he never got so near Hell as Arizona. If he had he’d have found it a place his God of Mercy hadn’t got on His map.”

He put Jinny aside and set to work fashioning himself a new cup. He had broken his only one the night before.

“I guess I was wrong about that last notion.” His brain took up the question again as he shaped the red clay. “I guess He must have this place on the map. Looks like His mercy’d been trailing me here, so to speak.”

He paused to contemplate the proportions of his new cup, staring, half startled, at its rounded surface. Phrases from the old psalm that mothers love to teach were beating upon his brain.

“Goodness and mercy,” he murmured, feeling his stumbling way among the words, “goodness and mercy shall follow me.”

The familiar glade grew new and strange to his sight, as though he saw it for the first time.

62“Why!” he cried, a sudden light dawning, “Is that what it means?”

62

Almost mechanically he went on patting and pressing the clay.

“I guess it does mean that,” whispered he at last, pinching up a handle for his cup. “I didn’t think I’d be alive till now when I came up here. I’ve wanted to die, many a time; but I’m glad, now, I didn’t. I may get out of here some day, too. I may live to get Westcott yet!”

“‘Goodness and mercy shall follow me.’” Was that so he could live to see his dream of vengeance fulfilled?

Ah! He could not give that up! It could never mean that he must give that up! Else where were the good of remaining alive?

No; no; it did not mean that! Even the old deacon wouldn’t have thought he must forgive what he, Gabriel Gard, had borne.

“Oh, Lord,” Gard said aloud, “It can’t mean that! It ain’t in human nature that it should mean that!”

The cup in his hand was crushed again to formless clay. He tore and kneaded it viciously, great drops of sweat beading his forehead.

“It’s against human nature,” he groaned as he sought to bring the plastic stuff again into shape. “I can’t do it! But—” The words rose 
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