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 she had the absurd consciousness that his mind pressed upon hers. There had been so many years and so much wonder--and no one came. It had been foolish indeed. And then came a year of wondering at the other. The old wonder concerning this one, excited by a certain fashion of rendering his head in unison with his shoulders--as might the statue of Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal--with its baser residue of suspicion, had been happily allayed by a closer acquaintance with Allan. One must learn, it seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of prejudice that flash but once at the first contact between human clouds. Yet in the last year there had come another wonder that excited a suspicion whose troubling-power was absurdly out of all true proportion. It was in the matter of seeing things--that is, funny things.