“We must all meet again,” said Belmont, “if only to talk our adventures over once more.  It will be easier in a year or two.  We are still too near them.”

“And yet how far away and dream-like it all seems!” remarked his wife.  “Providence is very good in softening disagreeable remembrances in our minds.  All this feels to me as if it had happened in some previous existence.”

Fardet held up his wrist with a cotton bandage still round it.

“The body does not forget as quickly as the mind.  This does not look very dream-like or far away, Mrs. Belmont.”

“How hard it is that some should be spared, and some not!  If only Mr. Brown and Mr. Headingly were with us, then I should not have one care in the world,” cried Sadie.  “Why should they have been taken, and we left?”

Mr. Stuart had limped on to the deck with an open book in his hand, a thick stick supporting his injured leg.

“Why is the ripe fruit picked, and the unripe left?” said he in answer to the young girl’s exclamation.  “We know nothing of the spiritual state of these poor dear young fellows, but the great Master Gardener plucks His fruit according to His own knowledge.  I brought you up a passage to read to you.”

There was a lantern upon the table, and he sat down beside it.  The yellow light shone upon his heavy cheek and the red edges of his book.  The strong, steady voice rose above the wash of the water.

“’Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed and delivered from the hand of the enemy, and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south.  They went astray in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in.  Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.  So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.  He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt.  Oh that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men.’

“It sounds as if it were composed for us, and yet it was written two thousand years ago,” said the clergyman, as he closed the book.  “In every age man has been forced to acknowledge the guiding hand which leads him.  For my part I don’t believe that inspiration stopped two thousand years ago.  When Tennyson wrote with such fervour and conviction":—­

   ’Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
    Will be the final goal of ill,’

“He was repeating the message which had been given to him, just as Micah or Ezekiel, when the world was younger, repeated some cruder and more elementary message.”

“That is all very well, Mr. Stuart,” said the Frenchman; “you ask me to praise God for taking me out of danger and pain, but what I want to know is why, since He has arranged all things, He ever put me into that pain and danger.  I have, in my opinion, more occasion to blame than to praise.  You would not thank me for pulling you out of that river if it was also I who pushed you in.  The most which you can claim for your Providence is that it has healed the wound which its own hand inflicted.”