Then he knelt upon his rock, and prayed—­offered up the last agonized prayer of a despairing human soul.  “O God—­have mercy on me just so far’s this.  Don’t let me die hopeless.  I’ve submitted myself into Your hands.  I don’t complain.  I don’t question.  I’m going to do it.  But don’t send me out in total darkness.  Give me a blink of light—­just one blink o’ light before I go.”

Was it this that had been wanted, this that had been waited for—­the true acknowledgment, the true submission, the cry for mercy of the repentant creature who has already tasted more than the bitterness of death?

He rose from his knees, and without once looking back left the rocks and came through the thicket to the ride.  It grew darker, the clouds dropped still lower, and the wind again blew fierce and strong.  He left the broad ride and sauntered along one of the narrow tracks.  He could hear the wind as it tore through slender branches high above his head, but down here it did not touch him; and he strolled on slowly, feeling extraordinarily calm, full of a great reverence and wonder, not noticing external things because he wished to maintain this strange inward peace.

Then soon the voluminous but indefinite sensations of mental tranquillity concentrated their soothing messages to make the comfort of one definite thought, and Dale said to himself:  “Christ has returned to me.”

And then he saw Him—­not for an instant believing that he really saw Him, that he had passed from the order of common facts into the realm of miracles, that the usual laws of heaven had been broken by a special material manifestation, or anything of that sort; but that he saw Him with the beautifully clear visualization for which he had longed and prayed.  And it seemed to him that the power of his thoughts took a splendid leap, and that he could now understand everything that hitherto had been unintelligible and inexplicable.  Very God, and very man.  Yes, this was the man—­a man after his own heart—­the comrade with whom one could work shoulder to shoulder and never know fatigue—­the unfailing friend whom one dared not flatter or slobber over, but the grip of whose hand gave self-respect and the glance of whose eyes swept the evil out of one’s breast.  And this was God too—­the only God that men can worship without fear; Whose power is so great that it makes one’s head split to think of, and Whose love is greater than His power.

And the voice of Christ seemed to speak to him, not by the channel of crudely imagined words, but in a transcendent joy that was sent thrilling through and through him.

“Then I need not despair,” he said to himself.  “That was the voice of Christ telling me to hope.”

He strolled on with bowed head, and remembered the night when he sat in Mr. Osborn’s little room, staring at the carpenter’s bench, and struggling between belief and doubt.  He had said:  “I want to be saved.  I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation.”  And Mr. Osborn had answered him:  “The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you.”