“Soon you will see your Saviour coming,
     In the air.”

So they sang.  This, and every line, was repeated many times.  It was only by repetition that the words, with their continuity of meaning, grew in ignorant ears.

   “All the thoughts of your inmost spirit
     Will be laid bare,
   If you love Him, He will make you
     White and fair.”

Then the idea of the first line was taken up again, and then again, with renewed hope and exultation in the strain.

   “Hark! you may hear your Saviour coming.”

It was a well-known Adventist hymn which had often roused the hearts of thousands when rung out to the air in the camp meetings of the northern States; but to those who heard it first to-night it came as the revelation of a new reality.  As the unveiling of some solid marble figure would transform the thought of one who had taken it, when swathed, for a ghost or phantom, so did the heart’s desire of these singers stand out now with such intensity as to give it objective existence to those who heard their song.

Into the cloud-walled heaven they all looked.  It is in such moments that a man knows himself.

Old Cameron, lifting up his strong, voice again, was bewailing the sin of the world.  “We sinners have not loved Thee, O Christ.  We have not trusted Thy love.  We have not been zealous for Thy glory.  This—­this is our sin.  All else Thou would’st have mended in us; but this—­this is our sin.  Have mercy!  Have mercy!  Have mercy!” Long confession came from him slowly, bit by bit, as if sent forth, in involuntary cries, from a heart rent by the disappointment of waiting.  In strong voice, clear and true, he made himself one with the vilest in this pleading, and all the vices with which the soul of man has degraded itself were again summed up by him in this—­“We have not loved Thee.  We have not trusted Thy love.  We are proud and vain; we have loved ourselves, not Thee.”

How common the night was—­just like any other night!  The clouds, as one looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker spaces.  How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood!  It is like a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be borne long.  The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.

Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near.  Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them.  Alec did; and felt concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion.  He noticed other things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all about him.  He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted.  Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion, and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his absence.  He was amazed now at his own assumption