IV

From that moment a new and exciting kind of life started. Not an hour

out of the twenty-four was free from anxiety. Always, whether it was

day or night, the Man and the dog had to take turns at guarding the

entrance. The Man gathered piles of stones and learnt how to throw them

unerringly. The dog trusted to his teeth and the fear which his bark

inspired. The animals were furiously determined; they never ceased from

attempting to surprise them. Quite often they would have succeeded, had

it not been for the robin, who hiding in the bushes, overheard their

strategies and flew back to the Man in time with warnings.

The cave was well chosen. It was approached by a steep and narrow path.

Only one enemy could attack at once, so the defenders were always able

to roll down bowlders on him before he gained a footing. That was how

they treated the lion, when he came thrashing his tail and roaring on

the first morning to make them prisoners. They gave a rock a big shove

and knocked him over like a ninepin. He was so hurt in his feelings that

he sulked in bed for a week; for many more weeks he was easily tired.

Seeing that he was the King of the Beasts and the President of their

Conference, this made the animals the more indignant and the more

determined that the Man and the dog must be punished. The next to

attempt their capture were the elephant and the rhinoceros. They boasted

that they weren't afraid of rocks; nevertheless they came together to

back up each other's courage. Half way up the slope they stuck. They

were too heavy for so steep a path. The ground crumbled from under them,

the dog worried them, the Man struck them, and away they went, bumping

down the hill, rolling over and over. They never stopped till they had

reached the bottom, where they lay on their backs with their feet in the

air, grunting and panting like a pair of upturned locomotives.

At first the Man and the dog regarded the enmity they had aroused in the

light of a huge joke; they got a good deal of fun out of fighting. But

the sporting side of the affair ceased to appeal to them when they were

compelled to recognize the seriousness of their predicament. They were

absolutely cut off from supplies at a season when food was running

short. They had to sneak out at night at the risk of capture to get

anything to eat at all. They had a sick woman on their hands who cried

not for food, but for delicacies. Instead of gathering strength, she

grew steadily weaker. And then there was the matter of sleep; it was as

scarce as food. They hardly snatched a wink of it. When they weren't on

guard or fighting, they were soothing her fretfulness, foraging for her

or thinking up some new method of keeping her warm. It was damp in the

cave; sunlight rarely tiptoed farther than the entrance. It didn't take

them long to discover that the hyena's coat had been as dearly purchased

as the forbidden fruit that had lost them the garden. Peace, which they

might have concluded in the early days, was now entirely out of the

question. Even an offer to return the hyena's coat wouldn't have made

any impression. They had carried hostilities too far; there wasn't an

animal whom they had not wounded and who wasn't mad with them clean

through from the point of his nose to the tip of his tail. Often and

often, standing in the entrance to his cave, the Man would gaze

longingly across the bronzy roof of the forest to the distant shining of

the padlocked gates of Eden. He was farther than ever from the garden

now with its tranquil blessedness. If only he hadn't learnt to steal!

Stealing had been the cause of his downfall--first the forbidden fruit

and then the hyena's coat. If he had been less enterprising and more

obedient, he would still have been the friend of God. After a wakeful

night he crept to the entrance to discover that the worst thing of all

had happened.

"A worse thing!" you exclaim. "I thought you were going to tell us a

cheerful Christmas story."

And so I am: but all the unfortunate part comes first--that's the way

the robins tell it. If you'll be patient and read on, you'll find this

is the very cheerfullest story that was ever told in earth or heaven.

You may not have noticed that we've not yet come to the first laugh. The

Woman has smiled and the hyena has scoffed; but no one has laughed. It's

when we come to the first laugh that the happiness commences.

V

The worst thing of all that the Man discovered when he crept to the

cave-entrance after a wakeful night, was this: with a terrible stealthy

silence snow was drifting down so that even the distant shining of the

gates of Eden was blotted out. It was frightening; snow had never fallen

in the world before. If it had, the Man had not seen it. Within the

walls of the garden summer had been perpetual. He stood there staring

out forlornly at the misty sea of shifting whiteness. It chilled him to

the bone. It seemed to him that the pillars of the sky had collapsed and

the dust of the moon and stars was falling. Soon everything would be

buried and the world itself would be no more. He looked at the calendar

which he had scratched upon the wall. It was the twenty-fourth day of

December. He wondered whether God knew what was happening and whether

He had planned it. Then he gave up wondering, for behind him, from the

blackness of the cave, the Woman called.

"Oh, Man," she cried, "I cannot bear this any longer!"

He groped his way to her and raised her in his arms so that her head lay

on his breast. Even in the darkness he could see the glow of her hair,

like the shadow of flame growing fainter and fainter.

"My Woman," he whispered, "what can I do for you?" And again he

whispered, "What can I do for you?"

She pressed her face close to his before she answered, petting him the

way she had been used to do in Eden. "Do for me? Nothing. You've tried

with your remedies--you've tried so hard. Poor you! If we could only

find God----"

"If we could," the Man said, "but----"

And then they both grew silent, for how could they find God when He had

climbed back to Heaven, destroying the sky-blue stairs behind Him?

"Perhaps, He still walks in Eden." It was the Woman who had spoken. "If

you were to go and watch through the bars of Eden till He comes and were

to call to Him--if you were to tell Him that I cannot bear it any longer

and that we're sorry, so sorry--that we did it in our ignorance----"

Without ending what she was saying, she fell to sobbing.

He didn't dare to tell her that the moon and stars were falling and that

the gates of Eden were blotted out. From where she lay in the blackness

of the cave she could see nothing; she was too weak even to crawl to the

entrance. As he did his best to comfort her, "If we could only again

find God----" she kept whispering.

So at last, having ordered the dog to guard her, the Man departed on his

hopeless errand. It was brave of him. He believed that in trying to find

God, he would get so lost that he would never be able to retrace his

footsteps. Before he went he kissed the Woman tenderly, begging

forgiveness for all the misery he had caused her.

"But I caused it, too," she confessed. "It wasn't your rib that was to

blame. It wasn't you at all. I wanted the fruit and we ate it together."

It was the first time she had acknowledged it; until then she had

insisted that the fault was his solely. So in the moment of farewell she

restored to him one little ray of the great, lost sun of flaming

happiness.