“If only poor Dismal were here,” sighed Mrs. Valiant just once; and then she looked across at the Shepherd and saw that his eyes were looking straight at her as though he read and understood her thoughts. Then Mrs. Valiant gave a little contented smile and said to herself, “It will be all right. He wants it even more than we do. It will take more than poor Dismal and her unhappy family to evade his love in the end.”

Then she went on bustling about, filling cups and attending to the wants of everyone, and was, without in the least realizing it, next to the Chief Shepherd himself, the most cheering and heartwarming person in the room.

CHAPTER 2
Mountain of Pomegranates
LOVE: The Law of Love

When the day was over the Shepherd called Grace and Glory and her two companions and they started back to their home on the High Places. All the way, while they were bounding and leaping up the mountainside toward the peaks above which were already glowing with flame and rose in the sunset light, Grace and Glory was thinking about the visit she had paid to her Aunt Dismal, and telling herself over and over again that before she returned to the valley, she must have a talk with the Shepherd-King and ask him all the difficult questions which were perplexing her mind, and so learn from him just what he wanted her to say, and how to fit the message so that it would penetrate into the dreary dungeon in which her aunt was immured.

As they all had “hinds’ feet” they could leap up the mountainside to the heights above in almost no time, and when they reached the King’s Gardens, where they were lodging at that time, she made known to him her desire. He told her to be ready very early next morning to go with him to the Mountain of Pomegranates, and there they would talk over the whole matter together.

Grace and Glory was filled with delighted expectation. She had never been to the Mountain of Pomegranates and she loved to be taken to new parts of the High Places and to look out on the glorious mountain ranges round about from new points of view. At all times, too, the very early morning hours which she spent with the Shepherd-King before the work of the day began were the most radiant hours of her life. Often it was long before sunrise that he called her, and they would talk together for two or three hours before meeting anyone else.

The following morning, just as the first flush of an early summer dawn turned the peaks on the opposite side of the valley rose pink, and the morning star still shone brightly in the sky, Grace and Glory heard the King’s voice calling her. Leaping up she made haste to follow him. They paused, however, for a moment to rejoice in the beauty of the snow-white peaks which seemed to be lifting themselves up toward the cloudless sky to catch the very first rays of the sun for whose rising they waited in an almost breathless hush. As the first beams appeared over the opposite mountains and the pure white slopes flushed a fiery rose, Grace and Glory looked up into the face of the King and said, “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning” (Psa. 130:6).