“I knaw, I knaw, Mr. Blee.  He ’m surely gwaine to let us keep li’l Willy, an’ win us to heaven for all time.”

The cross now lay at their feet, and Billy was about to return to the house and see how matters prospered, when Will bade him stay a little longer.

“Not yet,” he said.

“What more’s to do?”

“I feel a kind o’ message like to set it plumb-true under the sky.  Us caan’t lift it, but if I pull a plank or two out o’ the pig’s house an’ put a harrow chain round ’em, we could get the cross on an’ let a horse pull un up theer to the hill, and set un up.  Then us would have done all man can.”

He pointed to the bosom of the adjacent hill, now glowing in great sunset light.

“Starve me! but you ’m wise.  Us’ll set the thing up under the A’mighty’s eye.  ’Twill serve—­mark my words.  ‘Twill turn the purpose of the Lard o’ Hosts, or I’m no prophet.”

“’Tis in my head you ’m right.  I be lifted up in a way I never was.”

“The Lard ’s found ’e by the looks of it,” said Billy critically, “either that, or you ’m light-headed for want of sleep.  But truly I think He’ve called ’e.  Now ’t is for you to answer.”

They cleaned the cross with a bucket or two of water, then dragged it half-way up the hill, and, where a rabbit burrow lessened labour, raised their venerable monument under the afterglow.

“It do look as if it had been part o’ the view for all time,” declared Ted Chown, as the party retreated a few paces; and, indeed, the stone rose harmoniously upon its new site, and might have stood an immemorial feature of the scene.

Blanchard stayed not a moment when the work was done but strode to Newtake like a jubilant giant, while Mr. Blee and Chown, with the horse, tools, and rough sledge, followed more slowly.

The father proceeded homewards at tremendous speed; a glorious hope filled his heart, sharing the same with sorrow and repentance.  He mumbled shamefaced prayers as he went, speaking half to himself, half to Heaven.  He rambled on from a petition for forgiveness into a broken thanksgiving for the mercy he already regarded as granted.  His labours, the glamour of the present achievement, and the previous long strain upon his mind and body, united to smother reason for one feverish hour.  Will walked blindly forward, now with his eyes upon the window under Newtake’s dark roof below him, now turning to catch sight of the grey cross uplifted on the hill above.  A great sweeping sea of change was tumbling through his intellect, and old convictions with scraps of assured wisdom suffered shipwreck in it.  His mind was exalted before the certainty of unutterable blessing; his soul clung to the splendid assurance of a Personal God who had wrought actively upon his behalf, and received his belated atonement.

Far behind, Mr. Blee was improving the occasion for benefit of young Ted Chown.

“See how he do stride the hill wi’ his head held high, same as Moses when he went down-long from the Mount.  Look at un an’ do likewise, Teddy; for theer goes a man as have grasped God!  ’Tis a gert, gay day in human life when it comes.”