That silence was God’s speaking hour.  Within the old pastor’s soul a voice was whispering before which the thunderings of the creed of a sect were hushed.  He, poor man, knew full well that it was a voice which had long striven to make itself heard—­a still, small voice that would neither strive nor cry—­a haunting voice, a voice constant in its companionship during his later years.  How often he would fain have listened to it!  But he dared not, for was it not a contradictory voice?  Did it not traverse the letter which he had sworn to uphold and declare?  What if the voice were the voice of God?  No!  It could not be.  God spoke in His Book.  It was plain.  Wayfaring men might read, and fools had no need to err.  But was God’s voice for ever hushed?  Had He had no message since the seal was fixed to the Canon of Scripture?  What if that which he heard was one of those messages concerning which Christ said, ’I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’  Had the now in his life passed?  Had the then come when a fuller revelation was about to be vouchsafed?  Nay! even the Apostle—­the man inspired—­only knew in part.  Why should he, then, try to pry into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful throne?  And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at all.  Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays of light from Him—­rays seeking to pierce the clouds, and bring more truth—­truth which, in his highest moments, he had dreamed of, but never dared to follow.  Was not Dr. Hale right after all?  Was it not better to trust what we knew to be best in us, and follow the larger rather than the lesser hope?

And so, in the silence, the two voices reasoned in the soul of Mr. Morell.

In a little while Mr. Morell, roused from his reverie, turned to the young pastor, and said: 

’Your poet is right, Mr. Penrose.  The loving worm within its clod is diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds.  Let us go as far as the chapel.’

As they walked along the narrow, winding roadways, broken by projecting gables, and fenced by irregular rows of palisades, the old pastor began to re-live the long-departed days.  Objects, once familiar, on which his eye again rested, restored faded and forgotten colours, and opened page after page in the books of the past.  Many cottages mutely welcomed him, their time-stained walls memorials of generations with whom he held sacred associations.  There was the Old Fold Farm, with its famous fruit-trees, on which, in spring evenings, he used to watch the blanching blossoms blush beneath the glowing caress of the setting sun; and Alice o’ th’ Nook’s garden, with its beds of camomile, the scent of which brought back, as perfumes are wont to, forms and faces long since summoned by the ‘mystic vanishers.’  There, too, stood the old manse—­now tenantless—­so long the temple of his studies and domesticities, the shrine of joys and sorrows known to none save himself.  How the history of a life lay hidden there, each wall scored with fateful characters, decipherable only to the eye of him who for so many ears sought the shelter which they gave.