Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him--when reverence for a father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a sense of irremediable wrong--was it strange that there and then peace fell on him like a dove from heaven? Orphaned in one hour--now, and not till now--foredoomed to writhe like a worm amid the dust of the world--the man in him arose and shook off its fear. It was because he came to know--rude man as he was, unlettered, but strong of soul--that there is a Power superior to fate, that the stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known. And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully. When he awoke the pink and yellow rose of a wintery sunrise bloomed over the head of the Eel Crags. The tinkle of the anvil came from across the vale. Sheep were bleating high up on the frost-nipped side of the fell. The echo of the ax could be heard from the wood, and the muffled lowing of the kine from the shippon in the yard behind. The harsh scrape of Natt's clogs was on the gravel. A robin with full throat perched on the window-ledge and warbled cheerily. Last night was gone from him for all eternity. Before him was the day, the world, and life. CHAPTER XV. That day--the day before the wedding--all the gossiping tongues in Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the poor. "'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out. And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they never lick a lean poddish-stick." There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a prodigious five.