s. And that every man must
do. The sorrow will come afterwards, all in good time. Jesus offers to
take us out of our own hands into his, if we will only obey him.'

The eyes of the old man were fixed on his son as he spoke, He did seem
to be thinking. I could almost fancy that a glimmer of something like
hope shone in his eyes.

It was time to go home, and we were nearly silent all the way.

The next morning was so wet that we could not go out, and had to amuse
ourselves as we best might in-doors. But Falconer's resources never
failed. He gave us this day story after story about the poor people he
had known. I could see that his object was often to get some truth into
his father's mind without exposing it to rejection by addressing it
directly to himself; and few subjects could be more fitted for affording
such opportunity than his experiences among the poor.

The afternoon was still rainy and misty. In the evening I sought to lead
the conversation towards the gospel-story; and then Falconer talked as
I never heard him talk before. No little circumstance in the narratives
appeared to have escaped him. He had thought about everything, as it
seemed to me. He had looked under the surface everywhere, and found
truth--mines of it--under all the upper soil of the story. The deeper he
dug the richer seemed the ore. This was combined with the most pictorial
apprehension of every outward event, which he treated as if it had been
described to him by the lips of an eye-witness. The whole thing lived in
his words and thoughts.

'When anything looks strange, you must look the deeper,' he would say.

At the close of one of our fits of talk, he rose and went to the window.

'Come here,' he said, after looking for a moment.

All day a dropping cloud had filled the space below, so that the hills
on the opposite side of the valley were hidden, and the whole of the
sea, near as it was. But when we went to the window we found that a
great change had silently taken place. The mist continued to veil the
sky, and it clung to the tops of the hills; but, like the rising curtain
of a stage, it had rolled half-way up from their bases, revealing a
great part of the sea and shore, and half of a cliff on the opposite
side of the valley: this, in itself of a deep red, was now smitten by
the rays of the setting sun, and glowed over the waters a splendour of
carmine. As we gazed, the vaporous curtain sank upon the shore, and the
sun sank under