their aged relative the
text.

"Of course," they cried together, each repeating portions of it again
and again in the spirit of atonement.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Vardell, "that the mind undergoes a kind of
relaxation after a delicious tension such as we experienced to-day."

I marvelled greatly at this relentless sweetness.

"I knew it was in the New Testament," said Josie triumphantly--and we
silently accorded her the praise that was her due.

But I inwardly bethought myself of those silent granite lips in the
frozen North, unthawed by tender speeches, yet each one the reservoir of
my texts and sermons, as unforgotten as they were unsung.

XXV

_ST. CUTHBERT'S SECOND CALL_

My reluctant farewells had been said, my gracious entertainers had grown
dim upon the wharf; and the Atlantic was greeting our ship with
boisterous welcome. For the Atlantic is far travelled and loves to
surprise those Southern shores with the waves of Northern waters.

One by one the passengers retired from the deck, some with slow dignity,
some with solemn haste, and some with volcanic candour.

I remained, sharing the scant survival of the fit, and fell into a
reflective mood, for I love to think to music, none so grand as the
accompaniment of ocean. That mighty throat is attuned to the human; its
cry of deep mysterious passion, its note of conflict, is the epitome of
the universal voice. It accorded well with the mood that possessed me,
for that mood was gray.

The prevailing thought was this--that I was going back to winter. Grim
relapse this, I mused, to go forth from bud and bloom and bird, to
pendant icicle and drifted snow. For the blood soon warms beneath
Southern skies, and a man soon recognizes that a garden was the
ancestral home of him and of all mankind. Even the Eskimo can be traced
to Eden.

Yes, I was going back to winter in very truth, without and within; for
there is a sharper winter than any whose story the thermometer records.
The winter of my discontent, and of another's blighted heart, and of
still another's darkened life, awaited me beyond these turbid waters! My
way was dark, and my path obscure before me. Chart and compass were
blurred and numb. To remain in New Jedboro, and to remove to Charleston,
seemed equally distasteful.

I had given the Southern church no assurance of my purpose, because
purpose I had none. Yet the stern necessity of choice was upon me, this
most sombre enfranchisement of