But there was one thing he had not known, and that, the recovery of the faint heart which they had inspirited.  And then, in an instant he remembered how he had seen the three, years ago, against the sunset, as he rode with Anthony....

* * * * *

His mind was full of the strange memory as he came out at last, when the black darkness began to fade to grey, and the noise of the rain on the roof had ceased, and the wind had fallen.

It was a view of extraordinary solemnity that he looked on, as he stood leaning against the rough door-post.  The night was still stronger than day; overhead was as black as ever, and stars shone in it through the dissolving clouds that were passing at last.  But, immediately over the grim, serrated edge of the crag that faced him to the east, a faint and tender light was beginning to burn, so faint that, as yet it seemed an absence of black rather than as of a colour itself; and in the midst of it, like a crumb of diamond, shone a single dying star.  This high land was as still now as a sheltered valley, a tuft of springy grass stood out on the crag as stiff as a thin plume; and the silence, as at Padley two weeks ago, was marked rather than broken by the tinkle of water from his spring fifty yards away.  The air was cold and fresh and marvellously scented, after the rain, with the clean smell of strong turf and rushes.  It was as different from the peace he had had at Padley as water is different from wine; yet it was Peace, too, a confident and expectant peace that precedes the battle, rather than the rest which follows it....

How was it he had seen the three men on the moor; as he turned with Anthony?  They were against the crimson west, as against a glory, the two laymen on either side, the young priest in the middle....  They had seemed to bear him up and support him; the colour of the sky was as a stain of blood; and their shadows had stretched to his own feet....

* * * * *

And there came on him in that hour one of those vast experiences that can never be told, when a flood rises in earth and air that turns them all to wine, that wells up through tired limbs, and puzzled brain and beating heart, and soothes and enkindles, all in one; when it is not a mere vision of peace that draws the eyes up in an ecstasy of sight, but a bathing in it, and an envelopment in it, of every fibre of life; when the lungs draw deep breaths of it; and the heart beats in it, and the eyes are enlightened by it; when the things of earth become at once eternal and fixed and of infinite value, and at the same instant of less value than the dust that floats in space; when there no longer appears any distinction between the finite and the eternal, between time and infinity; when the soul for that moment at least finds that rest that is the magnet and the end of all human striving; and that comfort which wipes away all tears.