CHAPTER XVII.

Trenholme went from Mrs. Rexford's door that same day to pay some visits of duty in the village. The afternoon was warm, and exquisitely bright with the sort of dazzling brightness that sometimes presages rain. On his return he met a certain good man who was the Presbyterian minister of the place. The Scotch church had a larger following in Chellaston than the English. The clergyman and the minister were friends of a sort, a friendship which was cultivated on chance occasions as much from the desire to exercise and display large-mindedness as from the drawings of personal sympathy. The meeting this afternoon led to their walking out of the village together; and when the Scotchman had strolled as far as the college gate, Trenholme, out of courtesy and interest in the conversation, walked a mile further up the road with him.

Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted roots; the swaying firmament was of lofty branches, and the summer wind touched into harmony a million tiny harps. Minds that were not choked with their own activities would surely here have received impressions of beauty; but these two men were engaged in important conversation, and they only gave impassive heed to a scene to which they were well accustomed.

They were talking about improvements and additions which Trenholme hoped to get made to the college buildings in the course of a few years. The future of the college was a subject in which he could always become absorbed, and it was one sufficiently identified with the best interests of the country to secure the attention of his listener. In this land, where no church is established, there is so little bitterness existing between different religious bodies, that the fact that the college was under Episcopal management made no difference to the Presbyterian's goodwill towards it. He sent his own boys to school there, admired Trenholme's enthusiastic devotion to his work, and believed as firmly as the Principal himself that the school would become a great university. It was important to Trenholme that this man—that any man of influence, should believe in him, in his college, and in the great future of both. The prosperity of his work depended so greatly upon the good opinion of all, that he had grown into the habit of considering hours well spent that, like this one, were given to bringing another into sympathy with himself in the matter of the next projected improvement. It was thus that he had advanced his work step by step since he came to Chellaston; if the method sometimes struck his inner self as a little sordid, the work was still a noble one, and the method necessary to the quick enlargement he desired. Both men were in full tide of talk upon the necessity for a new gymnasium, its probable cost, and the best means of raising the money, when they walked out of the pine shade into an open stretch of the road.

Soft, mountainous clouds of snowy whiteness were winging their way across the brilliant blue of the sky. The brightness of the light had wiped all warm colour from the landscape. The airy shadows of the clouds coursed over a scene in which the yellow of ripened fields, the green of the woods on Chellaston Mountain, and the blue of the distance, were only brought to the eye in the pale, cool tones of high light. The road and the river ran together now as far as might be seen, the one almost pure white in its inch-deep dust, the other tumbling rapidly, a dancing mirror for the light.

The talkers went on, unmindful of dust and heat. Then a cloud came between them and the sun, changing the hue of all things for the moment. This lured them further. The oat harvest was ready. The reaping machines were already in the fields far and near, making noise like that of some new enormous insect of rattling throat. From roadside trees the cicada vied with them, making the welkin ring.

There were labourers at various occupations in the fields, but on the dusty stretch of road there was only one traveller to be seen in front of the two companions. When they gained upon him they recognised the old preacher who went by the name of Cameron. The poor old wanderer had been a nine days' wonder; now his presence elicited no comment. He was walking cap in hand in the sunshine, just as he had walked in the winter snow. To Trenholme the sight of him brought little impression beyond a reminder of his brother's wayward course. It always brought that reminder; and now, underneath the flow of his talk about college buildings, was the thought that, if all were done and said that might be, it was possible that it would be expedient for the future of the New College that the present principal should resign. This was, of course, an extreme view of the results of Alec's interference; but Trenholme had accustomed himself to look at his bugbear in all lights, the most extreme as well as the most moderate. That for the future; and, for immediate agitation, there was his resolution to speak to Sophia. As he walked and talked, his heart was wrestling with multiform care.

With one of those welcome surprises which Nature can bestow, the big swinging cloud which had shadowed their bit of earth for a few minutes and then passed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy shower. They saw the rain first falling on Chellaston Mountain, which was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a great spreading maple for shelter; then they, literally having regard to their cloth, ran also and joined the group. They passed the old man on the road, but when they were all under the tree he also came towards it.

There is no power in the art of words, or of painting, or of music, to fully describe the perfect gratefulness of a shower on a thirsty day. The earth and all that belongs to her thrill with the refreshing, and the human heart feels the thrill just in so far as it is one with the great plan of nature, and has not cut itself off from the whole by egotism as a dead branch is cut. All under the tree were pleased in their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high upon the sunny surface of the river.

The old man came quietly to them. The rain falling through sunshine made a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his hoary locks spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it.

Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture. They were remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst. There was something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy, seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.

"Sirs," he said, "do you desire the coming of the Lord?"

He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a village innocent, replied, "We hope we are giving our lives to advance His kingdom."

"But the King," said the old man. "He is coming. Do you cry to Him to come quickly?"

"We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time," said Trenholme, still benignly.

"His own time is suddenly, in the night," cried the old man, "when the Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building, selling, buying; and marrying—that is His time. We shall see Him. We shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His voice when he tells us that He loves us. We shall see Him when we pray; we shall hear Him give the answer. Sirs, do you desire that He should come now, and reign over you?"

The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer. The old man had always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that, strangely, they felt it incumbent upon them to answer. One, a dull-looking man, answered "yes," with conventional piety. Another said sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first. Then, when the first effect of the enthusiast's influence was passing off, they began to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them. A youth said rudely that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on to preach.

The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme. "He will come to reign," he cried, "to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him. Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?"

Trenholme did not give answer as before.

"Poor fellow," said the Presbyterian, pityingly.

The shower was passing over, and they moved away.

The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in all the beauty of its wet verdure. He looked round upon them all, and there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.

"I have a message to you," he said. "Before another Lord's, day comes, He will come."

The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.

"He is mad; they all know that he is mad," urged Trenholme, dissuading him.

They looked back, and saw the old man still preaching to the labourers under the tree. A mare with its foal, and two half-grown colts, had come up to an open fence within the tree's shadow, and, with their long gentle heads hanging over, they too seemed to be listening.

The Scotchman, exhilarated by the cooling of the atmosphere, genially invited Trenholme to a longer walk. Chellaston Mountain, with its cool shades and fine prospect, was very near. A lane turned from the high road, which led to the mountain's base. A hospitable farmhouse stood where the mountain path began to ascend, suggesting sure offer of an evening meal. Trenholme looked at the peaceful lane, the beautiful hill, and all the sunny loveliness of the land, and refused the invitation. He had not time, he said.

So they walked back the mile they had come, and Trenholme little thought how soon, and with what agitation, he would pass that way again.



CHAPTER XVIII.

The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram. She watched him as he drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could not have expected much from a telegram—they came too often.

"Ha!" cried Trenholme, "we are going to have visitors, Mrs. Martha."

A good deal to Trenholme's surprise, the message was from Alec, and from a point no further away than Quebec. It stated that he was there with Bates, who was ill, and he thought the best thing would be to bring him with him to Chellaston, if his brother had house-room enough.

The answers we give to such appeals are more often the outcome of life-long habit than instances of separate volition. No question of what answer to send occurred to Trenholme's mind as he pencilled his reply, assuring a welcome to the sick man.

When the answer was despatched he saw that, as fate had thrust the notice of this arrival between him and the proposed interview with Sophia; it would be better, after all, to wait only a day or two more, until he knew his brother's mind.

He heard nothing more from Alec that day. The day after was Saturday, and it rained heavily.

"What time will the gentlemen arrive?" asked Mrs. Martha, but not as if she took much interest in the matter.

"I can't tell," he replied. "They will probably let us know; but it's best to be ready when guests may come any time, isn't it?"

He asked her this with a cheering smile, because her manner was strange, and he wished to rouse her to a sense of her duties.

"Yes, sir; 'twouldn't seem like as if we was truly expecting and hoping unless we did our best to be ready."

The fervour of her answer surprised him.

For some time past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of impossible dishes in the near future for his brother's entertainment. He was surprised at the sedateness of her answers, and at a strange look of excited solicitude that arose in her eyes. It seemed to him that she was several times on the point of saying something to him, and yet she did not speak.

"What is it, Princess Win?" he cried. "What is in your mind, little one?"

He came to the conclusion that she was not very well. He got no information from her on the subject of her health or anything else; but thinking naturally that the change in the weather might have given her cold, he took pains to wrap her in his own mackintosh and take her home under his own large umbrella.

When there, he went in. He was greatly cheered by the idea that, although he might not tell his mind that day, he was now and henceforth courting Sophia openly, whatever befell; but the open courting, since it had only begun with his resolution of yesterday, and existed only in his own intention, was naturally not recognised. He was received with the ordinary everyday friendliness. But a change had occurred in the family circumstances, nothing less than that they sat now in the long neglected and still unfurnished room which went by the name of the drawing-room. The windows had been thrown open, and the covering taken from the family carriage. There it stood, still wheelless, but occupied now by Sophia and Mrs. Rexford, the girls and the darning basket, while some of the children climbed upon the box. Blue and Red, who were highly delighted with the arrangement, explained it to Trenholme.

"You see, we had a carriage we couldn't use, and a room we couldn't use for want of furniture; so this rainy day, when we all were so tired of the other room, mamma suddenly thought that we'd make the carriage do for furniture. It's the greatest fun possible." They gave little jumps on the soft cushions, and were actually darning with some energy on account of the change.

Trenholme shook hands with the carriage folk in the gay manner necessary to the occasion, but his heart ached for the little mother who had thus so bravely buried her last vestige of pride in the carriage by giving it to her children as a plaything.

"It's more comfortable than armchairs, and keeps the feet from the bare floor," she said to him, in defiance of any criticisms he might have in mind. But all his thought was with and for her, and in this he was pleased to see that he had divined Sophia's mind, for, after adding her warm but brief praise to the new arrangement, she changed the subject.

Winifred went upstairs quietly. Trenholme suggested that he hardly thought her looking quite well.

"She's an odd child," said Sophia. "I did not tell you, mamma, what I found her doing the other day. She was trying on the white frock she had this spring when she was confirmed. It's unlike her to do a thing like that for no reason; and when I teased her she began to cry, and then began speaking to me about religion. She has been puzzled by the views your housekeeper holds, Mr. Trenholme, and excited by old Cameron's teaching about the end of the world."

"I don't think it's the end of the world he's prophesying exactly," said Trenholme, musingly. "The Adventists believe that the earth will not be ruined, but glorified by the Second Advent."

"Children should not hear of such abstruse, far-off things," observed Mrs. Rexford; "it does harm; but with no nursery, no schoolroom, what can one do?"

Trenholme told them of Alec's telegram, and something of what he knew concerning Bates. His own knowledge was scanty, but he had not even said all he might have said when Mrs. Rexford politely regretted that her husband and son, taking advantage of the rain, had both gone to the next town to see some machinery they were buying, and would be away over Sunday, otherwise they would not have missed the opportunity offered by Sunday's leisure to call upon the newcomers.

"Oh, he's quite a common working-man, I fancy," added Trenholme, hastily, surprised at the gloss his words had thrown on Bates's position, and dimly realising that his way of putting things might perhaps at some other times be as misleading as it had just that moment been.

Then he went away rather abruptly, feeling burdened with the further apologies she made with respect to Alec.



CHAPTER XIX.

Trenholme went home and sat down to write an article for a magazine. Its subject was the discipline of life. He did not get on with it very well. He rose more than once to look at the weather-glass and the weather. Rain came in torrents, ceasing at intervals. The clouds swept over, with lighter and darker spaces among them. The wind began to rise. Thunder was in the air; as it became dusk lightning was seen in the far distance.

A little after dark he heard a quick, light step upon the garden path. The voice of the young dentist was audible at the door, and Mrs. Martha ushered him into the study. Trenholme had felt more or less prejudice against this fellow since he had become aware that he was in some way connected with the incident that had discomforted his brother in his lonely station. He looked at him with a glance of severe inquiry.

"I'm real sorry to disturb you," said the dentist; "but, upon my word, I'm uneasy in my mind. I've lost old Mr. Cameron."

It occurred to Trenholme now for the first time since he had heard of Bates's coming that he, Bates, was the very man who could speak with authority as to whether the old man in question had a right to the name of Cameron. He wondered if the American could possibly have private knowledge of Bates's movements, and knew that his coming could dispel the mystery. If so, and if he had interest in keeping up the weird story, he had done well now to lose his charge for the time being. Wild and improbable as such a plot seemed, it was not more extraordinary than the fact that this intensely practical young man had sought the other and protected him so long.

"Your friend is in the habit of wandering, is he not?" asked Trenholme, guardedly.

"Can't say that he is since he came here, Principal. He's just like a child, coming in when it's dark. I've never"—he spoke with zeal—"I've never known that good old gentleman out as late as this, and it's stormy."

"Did you come here under the idea that I knew anything about him?"

"Well, no, I can't say that I did; but I reckoned you knew your Bible pretty well, and that you were the nearest neighbour of mine that did." There was an attempt at nervous pleasantry in this, perhaps to hide real earnestness.

Trenholme frowned. "I don't understand you."

"Well, 'twould be strange if you did, come to think of it; but I'm mighty uneasy about that old man, and I've come to ask you what the Bible really does say about the Lord's coming. Whether he's crazed or not, that old man believes that He's coming to-night. He's been telling the folks all day that they ought to go out with joy to meet Him. I never thought of him budging from the house till some manifestation occurred, which I thought wouldn't occur, but when I found just now he was gone, it struck me all of a heap that he was gone out with that idea. I do assure you"—he spoke earnestly—"that's what he's after at this very time. He's gone out to meet Him, and I came to ask you—well—what sort of a place he'd be likely to choose. He knows his Bible right off, that old gentleman does; he's got his notions out of it, whether they're right or wrong."

Trenholme stared at him. It was some time before the young man's ideas made their way into his mind. Then he wondered if his apparent earnestness could possibly be real.

"Your application is an extraordinary one," he said stiffly.

Harkness was too sensitive not to perceive the direction the doubt had taken. "It may be extraordinary, but I do assure you it's genuine."

As he grew to believe in the youth's sincerity, Trenholme thought he perceived that, although he had asked what would be the probable direction of the enthusiast's wanderings, the dentist was really stricken with doubt as to whether the prediction might not possibly be correct, and longed chiefly to know Trenholme's mind on that important matter.

"This crazy fellow is astray in his interpretation of Scripture," he said, "if he believes that it teaches that the Second Advent is now imminent; and his fixing upon to-night is, of course, quite arbitrary. God works by growth and development, not by violent miracle. If you study the account of our Lord's first coming, you see that, not only was there long preparation, but that the great miracle was hidden in the beautiful disguise of natural processes. We must interpret all special parts of the inspired Word by that which we learn of its Author in the whole of His revelation, otherwise we should not deal as reverently with it as we deal with the stray words of any human author."

The young man, if he did not understand, was certainly comforted by this official opinion.

"I'm glad to hear you look upon it in that light," he said approvingly, "for, to tell the truth, if I thought the millennium was coming to-night I'd be real scared, although I've lived better than most young men of my age do; but, some way, the millennium isn't the sort of thing I seem to hanker after very much. I suppose, though, people as good as you would like nothing so well as to see it begin at once."

Trenholme looked down at the sheet of paper before him, and absently made marks upon it with his pen. He was thinking of the spiritual condition of a soul which had no ardent desire for the advent of its Lord, but it was not of the young man he was thinking.

"Of course," the latter continued, "I didn't suppose myself there was anything in it—at least"—candidly—"I didn't in the day-time; but when I found he'd gone out in the dark, and thought of all the times I'd heard him praying—" he broke off. "He's real good. I'm a better fellow for having lived with him so long, but I wish to goodness I'd never caught him."

The word "caught," so expressive of the American's relation to the wanderer, roused Trenholme's attention, and he asked now with interest, "May I inquire why you did take possession of him and bring him here?"

"Well, as to that, I don't know that I'd like to tell," said the young man, frankly. "Since I've lived with him I've seen my reasons to be none of the best." He fidgeted now, rising, cap in hand. "I ought to go and look after him," he said, "if I only knew where to go."

It struck Trenholme that Harkness had an idea where to go, and that his questioning was really a prelude to its announcement. "Where do you think he has gone?"

"Well, if you ask me what I think, Principal—but, mind, I haven't a word of proof of it—I think he's gone up the mountain, and that he's not gone there alone."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I think drunken Job's wife, and old McNider, and some more of the Second Advent folks, will go with him, expecting to be caught up."

"Impossible!" cried Trenholme, vehemently. Then more soberly, "Even if they had such wild intentions, the weather would, of course, put a stop to it."

Harkness did not look convinced. "Job's threatened to beat his wife to death if she goes, and it's my belief she'll go."

He twirled his hat as he spoke. He was, in fact, trying to get the responsibility of his suspicions lightened by sharing them with Trenholme at this eleventh hour, but his hearer was not so quickly roused.

"If you believe that," he said coolly, "you ought to give information to the police."

"The police know all that I know. They've heard the people preaching and singing in the streets. I can't make them believe the story if they don't. They'd not go with me one step on a night like this—not one step."

There was a short silence. Trenholme was weighing probabilities. On the whole, he thought the police were in the right of it, and that this young man was probably carried away by a certain liking for novel excitement.

"In any case," he said aloud, "I don't see what I can do in the matter."

Harkness turned to leave as abruptly as he had come in. "If you don't, I see what I can do. I'm going along there to see if I can find them."

"As you are in a way responsible for the old man, perhaps that is your duty," replied Trenholme, secretly thinking that on such roads and under such skies the volatile youth would not go very far.

A blast of wind entered the house door as Harkness went out of it, scattering Trenholme's papers, causing his study lamp to flare up suddenly, and almost extinguishing it.

Trenholme went on with his writing, and now a curious thing happened. About nine o'clock he again heard steps upon his path, and the bell rang. Thinking it a visitor, he stepped to the door himself, as he often did. There was no one there but a small boy, bearing a large box on his shoulders. He asked for Mrs. Martha. "Have you got a parcel for her?" said Trenholme, thinking his housekeeper had probably retired, as she did not come to the door. The boy signified that he had, and made his way into the light of the study door. Trenholme saw now, by the label on the box, that he had come from the largest millinery establishment the place could boast. It rather surprised him that the lean old woman should have been purchasing new apparel there, but there was nothing to be done but tell the boy to put out the contents of the box and be gone. Accordingly, upon a large chair the boy laid a white gown of delicate material, and went away.

Trenholme stood contemplating the gown; he even touched it lightly with his hand, so surprised he was. He soon concluded there was some mistake, and afterwards, when he heard the housekeeper enter the kitchen from the garden door, he was interested enough to get up with alacrity and call to her. "A gown has come for you, Mrs. Martha," he cried. Now, he thought, the mistake would be proved; but she only came in soberly, and took up the gown as if it was an expected thing. He bade her good-night. "Good-night," said she, looking at him. There was a red spot on each of her thin, withered cheeks. He heard her footstep mounting her bedroom staircase, but no clue to the mystery of her purchase offered itself to mitigate his surprise. Had she not been his housekeeper now for six years, and during that time not so much as a trace of any vagary of mind had he observed in her.

About an hour afterwards, when he had gone into the next room to look for some papers, he heard quiet sounds going on in the kitchen, which was just at the rear end of the small hall on which the room doors opened. A moment more and he surmised that his housekeeper must have again descended for something. "Are you there, Mrs. Martha?" he called. There was no answer in words, but hearing the kitchen door open, he looked into the lobby, and there a strange vision flashed on his sight. His end of the lobby was dark, but in the kitchen doorway, by the light of the candles she held, he saw his elderly housekeeper arrayed in the pure white gown.

He paused in sheer astonishment, looking at her, and he observed she trembled—trembled all over with the meek courage it cost her to thus exhibit herself; for she appeared to have opened the door for no other purpose than to let him see her. She said nothing, and he—most men are cowards with regard to women—he had a vague sense that it was his duty to ask her why she wore that dress, but he did not do it. He had no reason to suppose her mad; she had a perfect right to array herself in full dress at night if she chose; she was a great deal older than he, a woman worthy of all respect. This was the tenor of his thought—of his self-excusing, it might be. He bade her good-night again, somewhat timidly. Surely, he thought, it was her place to make remark, if remark were needful; but she stood there silent till he had gone back into the room. Then she shut the kitchen door.

In a little while, however, as stillness reigned in the house, some presentiment of evil made him think it would be as well to go and see if Mrs. Martha had finished trying on her finery and gone to bed as usual. He found the kitchen dark and empty. He went to the foot of her stairs. There was no chink of light showing from her room. The stillness of the place entered into his mind as the thin edge of a wedge of alarm. "Mrs. Martha!" he called in sonorous voice. "Mrs. Martha!" But no one answered. He opened the back-door, and swept the dark garden with the light of his lamp, but she was not there. Lamp in hand, he went upstairs, and passed rapidly through the different rooms. As he entered the less frequented ones, he began to fear almost as much to see the gaily-attired figure as he would have done to see a ghost. He did not know why this feeling crept over him, but, whether he feared or hoped to see her, he did not. The house was empty, save for himself. The night blast beat upon it. The darkness outside was rife with storm, but into it the old woman must have gone in her festal array.



CHAPTER XX.

Trenholme went out on the verandah. At first, in the night, he saw nothing but the shadowy forms of the college building and of the trees upon the road. It was not raining at the moment, but the wind made it hard to catch any sound continuously. He thought he heard talking of more than one voice, he could not tell where. Then he heard wheels begin to move on the road. Presently he saw something passing the trees—some vehicle, and it was going at a good pace out from the village. Shod though he was only in slippers, he shut his door behind him, and ran across the college grounds to the road; but the vehicle was already out of sight, and on the soft mud he could hear no further sound.

Trenholme stood hardly knowing what to think. He wore no hat; the damp, cool air was grateful to his head, but he gave no thought to it. Just then, from the other way of the road, he heard a light, elastic step and saw a figure that, even in the darkness, he could not fail to know.

"Sophia!" There was fear in his voice.

"Have you seen Winifred?" she cried.

"Winifred? No," he called, back.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her tidings.

"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night because they have told her that—that——"

His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign, that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep. She walked erect, giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice would be traitor to her.

"She left a paper for me." And then she added, "She wrote on it—what she was afraid to say—dear child!"

He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell more. He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face. She was walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so. He said that he hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many minutes since they had driven away. He would go at once, hoping to overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.

She never stopped in her steady walk. "You know they are not at home."

He was shocked to remember it. "Never mind!" he cried, "I will go with your authority. I will bring her back."

Still she did not waver in her walk. She spoke thickly out of her tears. "You may go to find this woman who has worked for you so long; I will go for Winifred."

"You must not come," he said almost harshly. "It is far too late; it is far too wet."

He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in front. Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her not to go.

There was nothing in his words or action that was precisely loverlike, nor did such likeness occur to her; but in the restraint he put upon the lover in him, his manner appeared to assume the confidence and ease of a perfect friendship, and she, scarce noting much how he spoke or acted, still felt that this advance of his gave her a new liberty to tell him that she scorned his friendship, for she had something of that sort seething in her mind concerning him. As to his request just then, she merely said she would go on.

He was very urgent. "Then I will not go," he said, stopping again. "You can't go without me, and if my going involves your going, it is better not to go." He did not mean what he said, but he hoped to move her.

"You can go or stay as you think right," she said. "I am going to get Winifred, poor lamb. I am not in the least afraid to go alone. I have got a pistol in my belt."

So he went with her. They both walked fast. The road was wide and muddy, and the night was very dark.

Trenholme noticed now for the first time that he walked in slippers; he would as soon have thought of turning back on this account as he would have thought of stopping if thorns and briars had beset his path. He felt almost as if it were a dream that he was walking thus, serving the woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly. Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He communicated the grounds of this hope to his companion. His heart was sore for his lady's tears. He had never before seen her weep. They had passed the cemetery, and went forward now into the lonelier part of the road. Then Trenholme thought of the warning Harkness had given him about the drunkard's violence. The recollection made him hasten on, forgetting that his speed was almost too great for a woman.

In the stir of events we seldom realise to the full the facts with which we are dealing, certainly never perceive at first their full import. Trenholme, however, after some minutes of tramping and thinking, felt that he had reason for righteous indignation, and became wroth. He gave vent to strictures upon superficiality of character, modern love of excitement, and that silly egotism that, causing people to throw off rightful authority, leaves them an easy prey to false teachers. He was not angry with Winifred—he excepted her; but against those who were leading her astray his words were harsh, and they would have flowed more freely had he not found language inadequate to express his growing perception of their folly.

When he had talked thus for some time Sophia answered, and he knew instantly, from the tone of her voice, that her tears had dried themselves.

"Are you and I able to understand the condition of heart that is not only resigned, but eager to meet Him Whom they hope to meet—able so fully to understand that we can judge its worth?"

He knew her face so well that he seemed to see the hint of sarcasm come in the arching of her handsome eyebrows as she spoke.

"I fear they realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement of some hysterical outbreak is what they seek."

"It seems to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she said; but she did not speak as if she cared much which view he took.

Her lack of interest in his opinion, quite as much as her frank reproof, offended him. They walked in silence for some minutes. Thunder, which had been rumbling in the distance, came nearer and every now and then a flash from an approaching storm lit up the dark land with a pale, vivid light.

"Even setting their motives at the highest estimate," he said, "I do not know that you, or even I, Miss Rexford, need hold ourselves incapable of entering into them." This was not exactly what he would have felt if left to himself, but it was what her upbraiding wrung from him. He continued: "Even if we had the sure expectation for to-night that they profess to have, I am of opinion that we should express our devotion better by patient adherence to our ordinary duties, by doing all we could for the world up to the moment of His appearing."

"Our ordinary duties!" she cried; "they are always with us! I dare say you and I might think that the fervour of this night's work had better have been converted into good works and given to the poor; but our opinion is not specially likely to be the true one. What do we know? Walking here in the dark, we can't even see our way along this road."

It was an apt illustration, for their eyes were becoming so dazzled by the occasional lightning that they could make no use of its brief flash, or of the faint light of night that was mingled in the darkness of the intervals.

Although he smarted under the slight she put upon him, he was weary of opposing her, because he loved her. "I am sorry that nothing I say meets with your approval," he said sadly.

It was lack of tact that made him use the personal tone when he and she had so far to travel perforce together, and she, being excited and much perturbed in spirit, had not the grace to answer wisely.

"Happily it matters little whether what you say pleases me or not."

She meant in earnestness to depreciate herself, and to exalt that higher tribunal before which all opinions are arraigned; still, there was in the answer a tinge of spite, telling him by the way that it did not distress her to differ with him. It was not wonderful that Trenholme, self-conscious with the love she did not guess at, took the words only as a challenge to his admiration.

"Indeed you wrong me. It was long ago I proved the value I put upon your advice by acting upon it in the most important decision of my life."

She had so long tacitly understood what her influence over him at that time had been that she could not now be much affected by the avowal.

"Indeed, if you recklessly mistook the advice of a vain child for wisdom, it is to be hoped that Providence has shaped your ends for you."

He did not understand her mood; he only thought of protesting his long loyalty to her. "It is true," said he, "that Providence has done more for me than I have done for myself; but I have always been glad to attribute my coming here to your beneficent influence."

Her heart was like flint to him at that moment, and in his clumsiness he struck sparks from it.

"Yet when I remember how you tried to explain to me then that the poor parish in which you were working might be offering the nobler life-work for you, I think that you were wiser than I. In their serious moments people can judge best for themselves, Mr. Trenholme."

He had noticed that, in the rare times she addressed him by name, she never used his big-sounding title of Principal. This little habit of hers, differently read before, seemed now like a clue to guide him to the meaning of her last remark, partly wrapped as it was in her politeness. He was no dullard; once on the track of her thought, he soon came up with her. In surprise he faced her insinuation squarely.

"You mean to tell me that you think I have not done well."

Half startled, she could think of no answer but the silence that gives consent.

"Is it for myself or others I have done ill?" he asked.

"The world here speaks loudly of your exertions on its behalf; I have never doubted the truth of its report."

"Then you consider that I myself am not what you would wish?" There was neither anger nor graciousness in his tone. His mind, arrested, merely sought to know further, and feeling had not yet arisen.

"You alarm me," she said coldly. "I had no thought of bringing these questions upon myself."

But it was of moment to him to know her mind.

"I spoke inadvisedly," she added.

"Yet you spoke as you thought?" he asked.

Fast as they were walking, she could not but notice that they were in the pine grove now, close by the river. Here the gale was loud, reminding her afresh of the loneliness of the place, and, as she felt the force of his question pressing upon her, all her energies rushed in anger to her self-defence.

"Yes, I said what I thought; but I ask your pardon for any truthfulness. Question me no further."

His stronger will was also roused. In bitterness of spirit he told her that he had a right to know her full meaning. He plied her with questions. When in steady tramp they came out on the open stretch of road between the pines and the mountain, over the noise of the swollen river he heard what she thought of him.



CHAPTER XXI.

That afternoon Alec Trenholme had essayed to bring his friend John Bates to Chellaston. Bates was in a very feeble state, bowed with asthma, and exhausted by a cough that seemed to be sapping his life. Afraid to keep him longer in the lodging they had taken in Quebec, and in the stifling summer heat that was upon, the narrow streets of that city, but uncertain as to what length of journey he would be able to go, Alec started without sending further notice.

As the hours of travel wore on, Bates's dogged pluck and perseverance had to give way to his bodily weakness, but they had reached a station quite near Chellaston before he allowed himself to be taken out of the train and housed for the night in a railway inn. In his nervous state the ordeal of meeting fresh friends seemed as great, indeed, as that involved in the remaining journey. So it came to pass that at dusk on that same evening, Alec Trenholme, having put his friend to bed, joined the loungers on the railway platform in front of the inn, and watched lightning vibrate above the horizon, and saw its sheet-like flames light up the contour of Chellaston Mountain. He did not know what hill it was; he did not know precisely where he was in relation to his brother's home; but he soon overheard the name of the hill from two men who were talking about it and about the weather.

"How far to Chellaston?" asked Alec.

They told him that it was only nine miles by road, but the railway went round by a junction.

Alec began to consider the idea of walking over, now that he had disposed of Bates for the night.

"Is the storm coming this way?" he said.

The man who had first answered him pointed to another. "This gentleman," he said, "has just come from Chellaston."

As the remark did not seem to be an answer to his question about the weather, Alec waited to hear its application. It followed.

The first man drew a little nearer. "He's been telling us that the Adventists—that means folks that are always expecting the end of the world—all about Chellaston believe the end's coming to-night."

Alec made an exclamation. It was a little like hearing that some one sees a ghost at your elbow. The idea of proximity is unpleasant, even to the incredulous. "Why to-night?" he asked.

"Well, I'll say this much of the notion's come true," said the native of Chellaston hastily—"it's awful queer weather—not that I believe it myself," he added.

"Has the weather been so remarkable as to make them think that?" asked Alec.

"'Tain't the weather made them think it. He only said the weather weren't unlike as if it were coming true." As the first man said this, he laughed, to explain that he had nothing to do with the tale or its credence, but the very laugh betrayed more of a tendency to dislike the idea than perfect indifference to it would have warranted.

In defiance of this laugh the Chellaston man made further explanation. He said the religious folks said it was clearly written in the Book of Daniel (he pronounced it Dannel); if you made the days it talks of years, and the weeks seven years, the end must come about this time. At first folks had calculated it would be 1843, but since then they had found they were thirty years out somehow.

"That would make it this year," agreed the first man. Some others that had gathered round laughed in chorus. They vented some bad language to; but the Chellaston man, excited with his tale, went on.

"All the Advent folks believe that. They believe all the good folks will be caught up in the air; and after that they're to come back, and the world will be just like the Garden of Eden for a thousand years."

He was casting pearls before swine, for some of his hearers chanted gibes. "Is that so?" they sang, to the notes of a response in Church music.

Night had closed in black about them. All on the platform had come together in close group. The wind-blown light of the station lamp was on their faces. In the distance the smouldering storm rumbled and flashed.

"All religious folks believe that," continued the speaker, a little scornfully, "and the Advents think it'll be now; but old Cameron we've had in Chellaston for a year, he tells them it'll be to-night."

Alec Trenholme had by this time received his brother's letters. "A year!" interrupted he almost fiercely. "Didn't he come in January?"

The narrator drew in the horns of his exaggeration. "D'ye know all about him, for there's no use telling if you do?"

"I only thought you might be talking about an old man heard went there then."

"He a'most died, or did really, somewhere below Quebec; and then he got up and preached and prayed, and his folks wouldn't keep him, so he wandered everywhere, and a kind young man we have at our place took him in and keeps him. When he was in the other world he heard the Judgment would happen to-night. Would that be the same man you know?"

"It will be the same man."

"Did you know his people?" asked the other curiously.

But Alec had no thought of being questioned. He brought the speaker back to his place as historian, and he, nothing loth, told of the intended meeting on the mountain, and of the white ascension robes, in his ignorant, blatant fashion, laying bare the whole pathetic absurdity of it.

Two ribald listeners, who had evidently been in some choir, paced arm in arm, singing the responses to the Litany in melodramatic fashion, except when their voices were choked with loud laughter at their own wit.

Pushed by the disagreeableness of these surroundings, and by keen interest in the old man who had once visited him, Alec decided on the walk. The mountain was nearer than the village; he hoped to reach it in time. He was told to keep on the same road till he came to the river, to follow its bank for about a mile, and when he saw the buildings of a farm just under the hill, to turn up a lane which would lead him by the house to the principal ascent. He walked out into the night.

At first he was full of thoughts, but after walking a while, fatigue and monotony made him dull. His intelligence seemed to dwell now in his muscles rather than in his brain. His feet told him on what sort of a road he was walking; by his fatigue he estimated, without conscious thought, how far he had walked.

When he had gone for nearly two hours the storm had come so much nearer that the lightning constantly blinded his eyes. He heard now the rushing of the river, and, as he turned into the road by its side, he saw the black hill looming large. Nothing but the momentum of a will already made up kept his intention turned to the climb, so unpropitious was the time, so utterly lonely the place. As it was, with quiescent mind and vigorous step, he held on down the smooth road that lay beside the swollen river.

Some way farther, when the water had either grown quieter or his ear accustomed to the sound, human voices I became audible, approaching on the road. Perhaps they might have been two or three hundred yards away when he first heard them, and from that moment his mind, roused from its long monotony, became wholly intent upon those who were drawing near.

It was a woman's voice he heard, and before he could see her in the least, or even hear her footsteps in the soft mud, the sense of her words came to him. She was, evidently speaking under the influence of excitement, not loudly, but with that peculiar quality of tone which sometimes makes a female voice carry further than is intended. She was addressing some companion; she was also walking fast.

"There was a time when I thought you were ambitious, and would therefore do great things."

There was an exquisite edge of disdain in her tone that seemed to make every word an insult that would have had power, Alec thought, to wither any human vanity on which it might fall.

Some reply, she received—he could not hear it—and she went on with such intensity in her voice that her words bore along the whole current of Alec's thought with them, though they came to him falling out of darkness, without personality behind them.

"We may call it ambition when we try to climb trees, but it is not really so for us if we once had mountain-tops for our goal."

Again came a short reply, a man's voice so much lower in key that again he could not hear; and then:

"Yes, I have wasted years in tree climbing, more shame to me; but even when I was most willing to forget the highest, I don't think a little paltry prosperity in the commonplace atmosphere of a colony would have tempted me to sell my birthright."

The man she was rating answered, and the clear voice came proudly again:

"You have at least got the pottage that pleases you—you are a success in this Canadian world."

Just then the soft, wet sound of feet tramping in mud came to him, and apparently the sound of his own feet was heard also, for the talking stopped until he had passed them. He discerned their figures, but so dimly he could hardly have told they were man and woman had he not known it before by their voices. They were walking very fast, and so was he. In a moment or two they were out of sight, and he had ceased to hear their footsteps. Then he heard them speak again, but the wind blew their words from him.

The tones, the accent, of the woman who had been speaking, told that she was what, in good old English, used to be called a lady. Alec Trenholme, who had never had much to do with well-bred women, was inclined to see around each a halo of charm; and now, after his long, rough exile, this disposition was increased in him tenfold. Here, in night and storm, to be roused from the half lethargy of mechanical exercise by the modulations of such a voice, and forced by the strength of its feeling to be, as it were, a confidant—this excited him not a little. For a few moments he thought of nothing but the lady and what he had heard, conjecturing all things; but he did not associate her with the poor people he had been told were to meet that night upon the mountain.

Roused by the incident, and alert, another thought came quickly, however. He was getting past the large black hill, but the lane turning to it he had not found. Until he now tried with all his might to see, he did not fully know how difficult seeing was.

The storm was not near enough to suggest danger, for there was still more than a minute between each flash and its peal. As light rain drifted in his face, he braced himself to see by the next flash and remember what he saw; but when it came he only knew that it reflected light into the pools on the road in front of him, and revealed a black panorama of fence and tree, field and hill, that the next moment, was all so jumbled in his mind that he did not know where to avoid the very puddles he had seen so clearly, and splashed on through them, with no better knowledge of his way, and eyes too dazzled to see what otherwise they would have seen. In this plight he did not hesitate, but turned and ran after the two he had met, to ask his way, thinking, as he did so, that he must have already passed the lane.

With some effort he caught them up. They must have heard him coming, for their voices were silent as he approached. He asked for the lane to Cooper's Farm, which he had been told was the name of the house at the foot of the mountain path. They both hesitated in their walk. The man, who ought to have answered, seemed, for some reason, suddenly dumb. After waiting impatiently, the lady took upon herself to reply. She said they had not yet reached the turning to the farm. She remarked that they were going to the same place.

Then they went on again, and he, too, walked quickly, supposing that he could soon pass them and get in front. It is not the matter of a moment, however, to pass people who are walking at a rate of speed almost equal to one's own. He had the awkwardness of feeling, that, whether he would or no, he was obliged to intrude upon them. He noticed they were not walking near together; but when one is tramping and picking steps as best one can in mud that is hidden in darkness, it is, perhaps, more natural that two people on a wide road should give one another a wide berth. At any rate, for a minute all three were making their way through puddles and over rough places in silence. Then, when Alec thought he had got a few paces in advance, he heard the lady speak again, and of himself.

"Did you think you knew that man?"

There was no answer. Alec felt angry with her companion that he should dare to sulk so obviously. After a minute or two more of fast walking, she said again:

"I can't think where he has gone to. Do you see him anywhere?"

To this again there was no answer. Alec naturally went the quicker that he might get out of hearing. As he did so he wondered much that his fellow-travellers went so fast, or rather that the lady did, for she, although some way behind, seemed to keep very near to him.

On they went in silence for ten minutes more, when the lady again took up her reproachful theme. Her voice was quieter now, but amid the harmonious sounds of wind and river he still heard it distinctly. The clear enunciation of her words seemed to pierce through the baffling noises of the night as a ray of light pierces through darkness, albeit that there was excitement in her tones, and her speech was, interspersed with breathless pauses.

"I have been rude; but you insisted upon my rudeness, now you are offended by it. So be it—let me say something else! I don't much believe now in all the sentiment that used to seem so noble to me about forgetting oneself. No thoughtful person can forget himself, and no candid person says he has done it. What we need is to think more of ourselves—to think so much of ourselves that all aims but the highest are beneath us—are impossible to our own dignity. What we chiefly need is ambition."

She stopped to take breath. It seemed to Alec she came near enough to see him as she continued. He could think of nothing, however, but what she was saying. He felt instinctively that it was because of haste and some cause of excitement, not in spite of them, that this lady could speak as she now did.

"Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action," she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, "so there must be a self-regard which is good—too good to degrade itself to worldly ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam—the gold of unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness—which makes the ordinary motive of the ordinary good man."

Her voice seemed to vibrate with scorn on the emphasized words.

"If we desired to live nearer heaven—" she said, and then she stopped.

Alec turned perforce to tell her, what she must now perceive, that he was still close to them; but this impulse was checked by a sudden thought. Was she not addressing himself? Was there another man now with her?

He stopped, looked backward, listened. He was quite alone with the lady, who went past him now, only looking, as she walked, to see why he was tarrying. In his fierce young loyalty to her he took for granted, without question or proof, that her escort had deserted her in revenge for her disdain. He would willingly have gone back to fetch him up, but the impossibility of finding a man who did not wish to be found, the impossibility, as it seemed to him, of letting her go further alone, the boorishness of calling after her—all this constrained him to follow. He ran to make his communication gently, and, as he ran, courage to make it failed him. He thought of her as delicately accustomed to incessant protection. At the thought of letting her know that she was telling her thoughts to a stranger, that she was alone at such hour and place with him, his throat swelled. He hated to speak words that would be so hateful to her; and when he came by her side breathless, and she spoke to him again, he walked on, waiting till she should stop, trying to formulate what he had to say, listening and watching intently for some sign of the recreant. Again speaking as though she must unburden her mind, she turned into the lane. Over its fences he peered down the dark main road, but neither in flash nor interval could the other man be seen. He had not the slightest notion what the lady was saying now; lofty philosophy or practical sarcasm it might be, it was all lost in his exaggerated idea of what her fear and dismay would be when he spoke.

Before he had a chance to speak, however, he saw, in dark outline, the building of the farm to which he supposed her to be going. It would be a thousand times better to conduct her in silence to the door, which was now so near. To tell her before could serve no end, for even if she should wish to return to seek her late companion she could there obtain an escort. So, with feeling of guiltiness in the part he was acting, and in the surly silence he assumed, Alec let her lead up the lane she must know better than he. Her previous speeches, which he had followed so closely, were only remembered now to give food for conjecture as to who she might be and what relation she held to her late companion. The interest in his own journey and its extraordinary object were lost for the time in the excitement of his knight-errantry.

He was astonished to see that the house, as they neared it, showed no sign of life and light. The lady, whether inmate or guest, must surely be expected; but the very roofs of the house and huge barns seemed to droop in slumber, so black was the whole place and closely shut. Alec was looking out for the house gate in order to step forward and open it, when, to his utter surprise, he saw that the lady with haste passed it, and went on toward the hill.

He stopped with hand on the gate and called her.

"What is the matter?" she asked, checking her walk. "Are you ill? What is it?"

He supposed that his strange voice would tell her all, but, although she was evidently puzzled, to his further astonishment, she did not realise that he was a stranger.

"Why do you speak like that?" she asked. And she talked on rapidly about some waggon she expected to find at the foot of the path. She went on, in fact, as if unable to endure the loss of time; and he, thinking of the waggon and waggoner as a further point of safety for her, ran after. In a minute they both came out of the lane on a small common. Here were two horses tied under a tree and an open waggon with its shafts laid down.

"Call the man," she said.

To Alec's call a man came sleepily from a small barn that was near. He said he had brought about a dozen women in the waggon, and they had gone up the hill. Impatiently she demanded of him how long it was since they had started to walk, and heard it was about a quarter of an hour. She went on once more, with what seemed to Alec incredible speed. But this time he gave way to no further indecision. Where she had darted under the trees he followed in her path.

They were just under the covert of the first trees on a steep footpath when he stopped her, and above him she turned, listening. The scent of moss and fern and overhanging leaf was sweet. So perfect a woodland bower was the place, so delicate did the lady seem to his imagination, that he wished he could tell his concern for her alarm and readiness to devote himself to her cause. But when he saw her shrink from him, he could only stand awkwardly, tell her in a few clumsy words that he and the other man had changed places, he did not know how, and he had thought to take her to the farm.

"Your voice is very like his," she said, looking at him strangely.

But he now knew certainly, what for the last hour had seemed to him almost impossible, that in very truth the religious assembly was to take place that night; and the thought of it, and of the strange excitement with which others had gone before them on that same path took from Alec, and, he supposed, from the lady also, the power to give much consideration to their own strange encounter. When he had told her of the time he had seen old Cameron at prayer in the lone wintry fields, and how far he had just walked to see him again in the strange conditions of to-night, they climbed on together.



CHAPTER XXII.

There is nothing of which men take less heed than the infection of emotion, a thing as real as that mysterious influence which in some diseases leaps forth from one to another till all are in the same pain. With the exception, perhaps, of the infection of fear, which societies have learnt to dread by tragic experience, man still fondly supposes that his emotions are his own, that they must rise and fall within himself, and does not know that they can be taken in full tide from another and imparted again without decrease of force. May God send a healthful spirit to us all! for good or evil, we are part of one another.

There were a good many people who went up the mountain that night to find the enthusiasts, each with some purpose of interference and criticism. They went secure in their own sentiments, but with minds tickled into the belief that they were to see and hear some strange thing. They saw and heard not much, yet they did not remain wholly their own masters. Perhaps the idea that Cameron's assembly would be well worth seeing was gleaned partly from the lingering storm, for an approaching storm breeds in the mind the expectation of exciting culmination, but long before the different seekers had found the meeting place, which was only known to the loyal-hearted, the storm, having spent itself elsewhere, had passed away.

There was an open space upon a high slope of the hill. Trees stood above it, below, around—high, black masses of trees. It was here old Cameron's company had gathered together. No woodland spot, in dark, damp night, ever looked more wholly natural and of earth than this. Sophia Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they might look and listen. They saw the small crowd assembled some way off, but could not recognise the figures or count them. Listening intently, they heard the swaying of a myriad leaves, the drip of their moisture, the trickle of rivulets that the rain had started again in troughs of summer drought, and, amidst all these, the old man's voice in accents of prayer.

Even in her feverish eagerness to seek Winifred, which had sustained her so long, Sophia chose now to skirt the edge of the wood rather than cross the open. As they went through long grass and bracken, here and there a fallen log impeded their steps. A frog, disturbed, leaped before them in the grass; they knew what it was by the sound of its falls. Soon, in spite of the rustle of their walking, they began to hear the old man's words.

It seemed that he was repeating such passages of Scripture as ascribe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much lighter now than when the storm hung over. They saw Cameron standing on a knoll apart from his company, his face upturned to the cloudy sky. Beyond him, over the lower ranks of trees, the thunder cloud they had feared was still visible, showing its dark volume in the southern sky by the frequent fiery shudderings which flashed through its length and depth; but it had swept away so far that no sound of its thunder touched their air; and the old man looked, not at it but at the calm, cloud-wrapped sky above.

"The Son of Man is coming in the clouds of heaven with power, and great glory."

The words fell upon the silence that was made up of the subdued sounds of nature; it seemed to breathe again with them; while their minds had time to be taken captive by the imagery. Then he cried,

"He shall send His angels with a trumpet, and a great voice, and they shall gather the elect upon the four winds. Two shall be in the fields; one shall be taken and the other left." He suddenly broke off the recitation with a heartpiercing cry. "My Lord and my God! Let none of Thy children here be left. Let none of those loved ones, for whom they have come here to entreat Thee, be among those who are left. Let it suffice Thee, Lord, that these have come to meet Thee on Thy way, to ask Thee that not one of their beloved may be passed over now, when Thou comest—Now!"

The last word was insistent. And then he passed once more into the prayer that had been the burden of his heart and voice on the night that Alec had first met him. That seemed to be the one thought of his poor crazed brain—"Come, Lord Jesus!"

The little band were standing nearer the trees on the upper side of the open. They seemed to be praying. Sophia came to the end of the straggling line they formed, and there halted, doubtful. She did not advance to claim her sister; she was content to single out her childish figure as one of a nearer group. She tarried, as a worshipper who, entering church at prayer-time, waits before walking forward. Alec stood beside his unknown lady, whose servitor he felt himself to be, and looked about him with no common interest. About thirty people were clad in white; there were a few others in ordinary clothes; but it was impossible to tell just how many of these latter were there or with what intent they had come. A young man in dark clothes, who stood near the last comers peered at them very curiously: Alec saw another man sitting under a tree, and gained the impression, from his attitude, that he was suffering or perplexed. It was all paltry and pitiful outwardly, and yet, as he looked about, observing this, what he saw had no hold on his mind, which was occupied with Cameron's words; and under their influence, the scene, and the meaning of the scene, changed as his mood changed in sympathy.

A hymn began to rise. One woman's voice first breathed it; other voices mingled with hers till they were all singing. It was a simple, swaying melody in glad cadence. The tree boughs rocked with it on the lessening wind of the summer night, till, with the cumulative force of rising feeling, it seemed to expand and soar, like incense from a swinging censer, and, high and sweet, to pass, at length through the cloudy walls of the world. The music, the words, of this song had no more of art in them than the rhythmic cry of waves that ring on some long beach, or the regular pulsations of the blood that throbs audibly, telling our sudden joys. Yet, natural as it was, it was far more than any other voice of nature; for in it was the human soul, that can join itself to other souls in the search for God; and so complete was the lack of form in the yearning, that this soul came forth, as it were, unclothed, the more touching because in naked beauty.

"Soon you will see your Saviour coming, In the air."

So they sang. This, and every line, was repeated many times. It was only by repetition that the words, with their continuity of meaning, grew in ignorant ears.

"All the thoughts of your inmost spirit Will be laid bare, If you love Him, He will make you White and fair."

Then the idea of the first line was taken up again, and then again, with renewed hope and exultation in the strain.

"Hark! you may hear your Saviour coming."

It was a well-known Adventist hymn which had often roused the hearts of thousands when rung out to the air in the camp meetings of the northern States; but to those who heard it first to-night it came as the revelation of a new reality. As the unveiling of some solid marble figure would transform the thought of one who had taken it, when swathed, for a ghost or phantom, so did the heart's desire of these singers stand out now with such intensity as to give it objective existence to those who heard their song.

Into the cloud-walled heaven they all looked. It is in such moments that a man knows himself.

Old Cameron, lifting up his strong, voice again, was bewailing the sin of the world. "We sinners have not loved Thee, O Christ. We have not trusted Thy love. We have not been zealous for Thy glory. This—this is our sin. All else Thou would'st have mended in us; but this—this is our sin. Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!" Long confession came from him slowly, bit by bit, as if sent forth, in involuntary cries, from a heart rent by the disappointment of waiting. In strong voice, clear and true, he made himself one with the vilest in this pleading, and all the vices with which the soul of man has degraded itself were again summed up by him in this—"We have not loved Thee. We have not trusted Thy love. We are proud and vain; we have loved ourselves, not Thee."

How common the night was—just like any other night! The clouds, as one looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker spaces. How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood! It is like a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be borne long. The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.

Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near. Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them. Alec did; and felt concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion. He noticed other things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all about him. He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted. Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion, and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his absence. He was amazed now at his own assumption that design, not accident, had caused such desertion. He could almost have started in his solicitude, to seek the missing man, such was the rebound of his mind. Yet to all this he only gave vagrant thoughts, such as we give to our fellows in church. The temple of the night had become a holy place, and his heart was heavy—perhaps for his old friend, standing there with uplifted face, perhaps on account of the words he was uttering, perhaps in contrition. In a few minutes he would go forward, and take the old preacher by the arm, and try, as he had once tried before, to lead him to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair.

Absorbed in this, Alec heard what came to him as harsh profane speech; and yet it was not this; it was the really modest address of a young man who felt constrained to speak to him.

"I don't know," he said nervously (his accent was American), "who you may be, but I just wish to state that I've a sort of notion one of those fellows right down there means mischief to one of these poor ladies in white, who is his wife. I ain't very powerful myself, but, I take it, you're pretty strong, aren't you?"

Alec gave impatient assent; but the men whom he was asked to watch approached no nearer to the women but remained behind the preacher.

All this time old Cameron prayed on, and while it might be that hope in his followers was failing, in his voice there was increasing gladness and fervour.

The clouds above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white as snow.

As the well of clear far light was opened to the old man's gaze, his prayer stopped suddenly, and he stood only looking upwards. They did not see so much as know from the manner in which his voice had failed, that for him, at least, there were moments of ecstasy in the assurance of hope.

"Poor fellow!" muttered Alec under his breath, for he felt the poignant disappointment of the awakening.

A sweet sound made some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering song of joy.

Its notes had not ceased when Alec heard a gasp of terror from the lady near him, and saw, as one sees an act there is no time to avert, that one of the rough fellows who were standing behind the old man had suddenly struck him down by a savage blow upon the head.

Alec Trenholme ran and sprang upon the man who had struck the blow. Some other man, he did not see which, wrested the club from the fellow's hand. In the moments Alec was grappling with him he became conscious that the old man lying near his feet on the grass was more to him than revenge, and, with the caprice of a boy who turns from what interests him less to what interests him more, he contented himself with hurling the assailant from him, so that he fell heavily down the sloping ground to where his companions stood. Then Alec pushed others aside and lifted the wounded man.

Wounded? His hair was wet with warm blood. There was something done—a good deal done, by many people—to restore him. Alec remembered afterwards that the young man who had previously spoken to him had been active, showing a more personal solicitude than was seen in the awed kindness even of the women. One lives through such scenes with little real perception of their details. He knew at last for certain that he put his burden from him, and throwing himself down laid his ear on the broad, muscular breast. Long as he listened, there was no movement there. The mad old preacher was dead.



CHAPTER XXIII.

When Alec Trenholme rose from the dead man's side he felt his shoulder taken hold of by a familiar hand. He knew at once that it was his brother. It was quite what he would have expected, that Robert should be there; it was surely his business to come after straying sheep.

The manslayer, awed and sobered by finding what he had done, had been easily overpowered. Even his comrades helped to bind him. He was a poor creature at best, and was now in the misery that comes with sudden reaction from the exaltation of strong drink.

Alec saw that his brother was limping, that he seemed in actual pain; he was anxious to know how this was, yet he did not say so. He asked rather if Robert thought that the old man had consciously awakened from his trance of expectation, and they both, in spite of all that pressed, stooped with a lantern some one had lit to look again at the dead face. Just as he might have looked when the heavens seemed to open above him, so he looked now. They talked together, wondering who he really was, as men find words for what is easiest to say, although not relevant to the moment's necessity.

So absorbing is the interest of death to those who live in peaceful times that, now that there was a lamp, all there required to slake their curiosity by lingering gaze and comment before they would turn away. Even the prisoner, when he saw the lantern flashed near the face of the dead, demanded to be allowed to look before they led him down the hill. His poor wife, who had expected his violence to fall only on herself, kept by him, hysterically regretting that she had not been the victim.

Yet, although all this had taken place, it was only a short time before the energy of a few, acting upon the paralysed will of others, had cleared the ground. The white-dressed women crossed the open to the descending path, huddling together as they walked, their eyes perforce upon the rough ground over which they must pick their steps. There was many a rift now in the breaking clouds above them, but only a few turned an upward passionate glance. Sophia moved away in their midst. Seeing her thus surrounded, Alec did not feel that he need approach.

"I don't know who she is," he said, pointing her out to Robert. "I happened, in a queer way, to come up here with her." He paused a moment. Some sentiment such as that she was a queen among women was in his mind, but it did not rise to his lips. "She would like your help better than mine," he added. "If you will see that she and her little sister are taken care of, I will stay here"—he gave a gesture toward the corpse—"till a stretcher comes."

"I will do my best to take care of them all," Robert Trenholme answered with a sigh.

Old McNider and his little boy walked behind the women. Robert, limping as he went, lifted the sleepy child in his arms and joined himself to the company. They went under the dripping trees, down, down the dark, slippery path. The white robes hardly glimmered in the darkness. Some of the women wept; some of them held religious conversation, using such forms of expression as grow up among certain classes of pious, people and jar terribly on unaccustomed ears. Those who talked at this time had less depth of character than those who were silent, and there was evinced in their conversation a certain pride of resistance to criticism—that is, they wished to show that if what they had looked for had not come that night, their expectation of it bad been reasonable, and that their greatest hopes would shortly be realised to the confounding of unbelievers. They did not know the manner of their spirit. Few who indulge in demonstration of piety as a relief to feeling ever perceive how easily the natural passions can flow into this channel.

Jesus wished to try their faith, said they, but they would not cast away their lamps; no, they must keep them trimmed and burning. They could not live unless they felt that dear Jesus might come for them any night.

"Blessed be His holy Name!" cried one. "When He comes the world will see Him Whom they have despised, and His saints they have looked down on, too, reignin' together in glory. Yes, glory be to Jesus, there'll be a turnin' of the tables soon."

To Trenholme it seemed that they bandied about the sacred name. He winced each time.

One woman, with more active intellect than some of the rest, began to dilate on the signs already in the world which proved the Second Advent was near. Her tone was not one of exulted feeling, but of calm reason. Her desire was evidently to strengthen her sisters who might be cast down. In her view all the ages of the history of the vast human race were seen in the natural perspective which makes things that are near loom larger than all that is far. The world, she affirmed, was more evil than it had ever been. In the Church there was such spiritual death as never before. The few great revivals there were showed that now the poor were being bidden from the highways to the marriage feast. And above all else, it was now proved that the coming of the Lord was nigh, because bands of the elect everywhere were watching and waiting for the great event. Her speech was well put forth in the midst of the weary descent. She did not say more than was needed. If there were drooping hearts among her friends they were probably cheered.

Then some more emotional talkers took up the exultant strain again. It was hard for Trenholme not to estimate the inner hearts of all these women by the words that he heard, and therefore to attribute all the grace of the midnight hour to the dead.

When they got to the bottom of the hill, the farmer, at the request of men who had gone first, had another waggon in readiness to take home the women who had come to the hill on foot or who had sent away their vehicles. Many of them did not belong to the village of Chellaston. It was evidently better that the lighter waggon which had come from Chellaston should go round now to the outlying farms, and that all the villagers should return in that provided by the farmer. Trenholme put in the child, who was now sleeping, and helped in the women, one by one. Their white skirts were wet and soiled; he felt this as he aided them to dispose them on the straw which had been put in for warmth. The farmer, an Englishman, made some wise, and not uncivil, observations upon the expediency of remaining at home at dead of night as compared with ascending hills in white frocks. He was a kind man, but his words made Winifred's tears flow afresh. She shrank behind the rest. Trenholme kissed her little cold hand when he had put her in. Then, last of all, he helped Sophia.

She had no words ready now to offer him by which to make amends. "You have hurt your foot?" she said.

He told her briefly that his foot had twisted under him, so that at first he had not been able to come on for the sprain, and he clasped her hand as he bade the waggon drive on.

Feeling the lack of apology on her own part she thought he had shown himself the greater, in that he had evidently pardoned her without it.

He did not feel himself to be great.

The cart jolted away. Trenholme stood in the farmyard. The light of a lantern made a little flare about the stable door. The black, huge barns, around seemed to his weary sense oppressive in their nearness. The waggon disappeared down the dark lane. The farmer talked more roughly, now that kindness no longer restrained him, of the night's event. Trenholme leaned against a white-washed wall, silent but not listening. He almost wondered he did not faint with the pain in his ankle; the long strain he had put upon the hurt muscle rendered it almost agonising, but faintness did not come: it seldom does to those who sigh for it, as for the wings of a dove, that they may go far away with it and be at rest. The farmer shut the stable door, put out the light, and Trenholme limped out the house with him to wait for his brother.



CHAPTER XXIV.

All this time Alec was walking, like a sentry, up and down beside the old man's corpse. He was not alone. When the others had gone he found that the young American had remained with him. He came back from the lower trees whence he had watched the party disappear.

"Come to think of it," he said, "I'll keep you company."

Something in his manner convinced Alec that this was no second thought; he had had no intention of leaving. He was a slight fellow, and, apparently too tired now to wish to stand or walk longer, he looked about him for a seat. None offered in the close vicinity of the corpse and Alec, its sentinel; but, equal to his own necessity, he took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it into a small square, laid it on the wet beaten grass, and sat thereon, arching his knees till only the soles of his boots touched the ground. To Alec's eye his long, thin figure looked so odd, bent into this repeated angle, that he almost suspected burlesque, but none was intended. The youth clasped his hands round his knees, the better to keep himself upright, and seated thus a few yards from the body, he shared the watch for some time as mute as was all else in that silent place.

Alec's curiosity became aroused. At last he hesitated in his walk.

"You are from the States?"

"Well, yes; I am. But I reckon I'm prouder of my country than it has reason to be of me. I'm down in the mouth to-night—that's a fact."

A fine description of sorrow would not have been so eloquent, but exactly what he sorrowed for Alec did not know. It could hardly be for the death merely.

Alec paced again. He had made himself an uneven track in the ragged grass. Had the lineaments of the dead been more clearly seen, death would have had a stronger influence; but even as it was, death, darkness, and solitude had a language of their own, in which the hearts of the two men shared more or less.

At length the American spoke, arresting Alec's walk.

"See here," he said, "if what they say is true—and as far as I know it is—he's got up from being dead once already."

The emphasis on the word "once" conveyed the suggestion which had evidently just occurred to him.

"Oh, I know all about that story." Alec spoke with the scorn of superior information, casting off the disagreeable suggestion. "I was there myself."

"You were, were you? Well, so was I, and I tell you I know no more than babe unborn whether this old gentleman's Cameron or not."

Alec's mind was singularly free from any turn for speculative thought. He intended to bring Bates to see the dead in the morning, and that would decide the matter. He saw no sense in debating a question of fact.