source of
refreshment both physical and spiritual to all within the field of his
magnetism.

So agreed those who listened to that first sermon on Faith, in which
that virtue was said be like the diamond, made only the brighter by
friction. Motionless his listeners sat while he likened Faith to the
giant engine that has rolled the car of Religion out from the maze of
antiquity into the light of the present day, where it now waits to be
freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to
that hoped-for golden era when truth shall come forth as a new and
blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in
one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the
sovereignty of Omnipotence.

Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and unstudied eloquence,
the young man pictured himself standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain,
while a storm raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those
far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle in the blue
serene of Faith. Faith was, indeed, a tear dropped on the world's cold
cheek of Doubt to make it burn forever.

Even those long since _blase_ to pulpit oratory thrilled at the simple
beauty of his peroration, which ran: "_Faith!_ Oh, of all the flowers
that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none
so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Faith. Other flowers there may
be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that
their fragrance become perceptible. But this flower--"

In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another year to prevail
over one of his hearers. True, she had met him after that first
triumphant ordination sermon with her black lashes but half-veiling the
admiration that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low
assurance, "Nance, you _please_ me! Really you do!" as his yellow eyes
lingered down her rounded slenderness from summer bonnet to hem of
summer gown, rippled her face with a colour she had to laugh away.

Yet she had been obstinate and wondering. There had to be a year in
which she knew that one she dreamed of would come back; another in which
she believed he might; another in which she hoped he would--and yet
another in which she realised that dreams and hopes alike were
vain--vain, though there were times in which she seemed to feel again
the tingling life of that last hand-clasp; times when he called to her;
times when