And, on the very last page of _The Light in the Clearing_, we have an
even more striking presentment of the same profound truth. For I said
that, in the book, there is yet one other grave. It is a lonely grave up
among the hills--the grave of the stranger who was shot by Amos Grimshaw
that dark night; and this time it is old Kate who sits weeping beside
it. For who was the stranger murdered upon the highway? It turns out to
have been _Kate's own son_!
'It is very sorrowful,' she moans. 'He was trying to find me when he
died!'
And so the murderer and the murdered were step-brothers! They were both
the sons of Benjamin Grimshaw!
And, in this grave up among the hills, there lie down with poor murdered
Enoch his own sins--whatever they may have been--and his father's
sins--the sins that made him an outcast and a fugitive--and his mother's
sins, the sins of the only being who loved him!
Yes, his mother's sins; for his mother's sins had slain him. In her
hatred of Benjamin Grimshaw, she had moved Amos Grimshaw to become a
murderer, and he had murdered--_her own son!_
'It is very sorrowful!' she moans.
It is indeed; sin is always sorrowful.