He paused and was silent for a long time. At last Grace and Glory asked softly, “What happened, my Lord?”

“It brought forth wild vines,” said the King quietly. “An enemy sowed them, bitter, poisonous vines which bore bitter, poisonous fruits. And moreover, the wild vines ran riot, flourishing in the richly fertilized soil, growing strong and rank. They smothered and choked the vines which I had planted, and they clambered up the other trees and strangled them to death also, until there were great curtains and festoons of wild vines covering everything.”

“Couldn’t you have done something about it?” asked Grace and Glory sorrowfully. “Couldn’t you have rooted up the wild vines and got rid of them?”

“We tried doing that,” said the King. “We tore them up and burned them, but the shoots ran underground, and as fast as we rooted them up, they appeared elsewhere. We tried, too, grafting the wild vines with grafts from the royal vineyards over on these mountains, but the grafts would not take. The wild vines were parasites, and they seized on the real vines as I told you, and on all the other trees, and sucked the life out of them or strangled them to death. So at last there was only one thing to be done. We set fire to the mountain and caused it to be burned from top to bottom until all that was evil and parasitical and wild was utterly destroyed.”

“And will you leave it like that, ruined and desolate and dead?” asked Grace and Glory in a trembling whisper.

“Oh no!” answered the King with a look of loveliest joy upon his face. “We will plant it again and make it of greater fruitfulness than would otherwise have been possible. For the ashes are making the soil still more fertile and are preparing it for resurrection life. One day the view from this Mountain of Pomegranates will show all the peaks round about looking down on a mountain of vineyards more fair and more fruitful than any other part of the Kingdom.”

There was another long silence and then Grace and Glory spoke again. “I begin to see why you brought me here, my Lord. You understood what I wanted to speak to you about. I am so troubled and perplexed. Will you teach me? Will you let me ask all the questions which have troubled me since we went back to the Valley of Humiliation and I found my aunt in such misery and was unable to help her?”

“Ask anything you wish,” said he gently. “This Mountain of Love with the view from it, is one of the best places in the world for the asking of questions and for the receiving of answers.”

“Then,” said Grace and Glory slowly, “I want to ask you about all the evil and the misery down there in the valley and the cause of it. What is it, Lord, which has wrought all the havoc? Why are all the inhabitants of the valley so wretched and miserable and dreary even though they seem hardly to realize it?”