"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith, when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over the Alps!" Mr. Armstrong understood her. "It has been beautiful," said he. "I shall begin to expect always to encounter you whenever I get among things wild and wonderful!" "And yet I have lived all my life, till now, in tame streets," said Faith. "I thought I was getting into tamer places still, when we first came to the country. But I am finding out Kinnicutt. One can't see the whole of anything at once." "We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does." Faith was silent. "Did it ever occur to you," said Mr. Armstrong, "how little your thought can really grasp at once, even of what you already know? How narrow your mental horizon is?" "Doesn't it seem strange," said Faith, in a subdued tone, "that the earth should all have been made for such little lives to be lived in, each in its corner?" "If it did not thereby prove these little lives to be but the beginning. This great Beyond that we get glimpses of, even upon earth, makes it so sure to us that there must be an Everlasting Life, to match the Infinite Creation. God puts us, as He did Moses, into a cleft of the rock, that we may catch a glimmer of His glory as He goes by; and then He tells us that one day we 'shall know even as also we are known'!" "And I suppose it ought to make us satisfied to live whatever little life is given us?" said Faith, gently and wistfully. Mr. Armstrong turned toward her, and looked earnestly into her eyes. "Has that thought troubled _you_, too? Never let it do so again, my child! Believe that however little of tangible present good you may have, you have the unseen good of heaven, and the promise of all things to come." "But we do see lives about us in the world that seem to be and to accomplish so much!" "And so we ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that question was a struggle." "I _should_ like!" said Faith, with deeply stirred and grateful emphasis. Then they drove on in silence, for a while; and then the minister, pleasantly and easily, brought on a conversation of everyday matters; and so they came to Cross Corners, just as Mrs. Gartney was gazing a little anxiously out of the window, down the road. Mrs. Gartney urged the minister to come in and join them at the tea table; but "it was late in the week--he had writing to finish at home that evening--he would very gladly come another time."