Mr. Gartney examined the harness. The broken shaft proved the extent of damage done. This, at the moment, however, was irremediable. He knotted the hanging straps and laid them over the horse's neck. Then he folded a buffalo skin, and arranged it, as well as he could, above and behind the saddle, which he secured again by its girth.
"Mr. Armstrong," said he, as he completed this disposal of matters, "you came along in good time. I am very much obliged to you. If you will do me the further favor to take my daughter home, I will ride to the nearest house where I can obtain a sleigh, and some one to send back for these traps of mine."
"Miss Gartney," said the minister, in answer, "can you sit a horse's back as well as you did his eyebrow?"
Faith laughed, and reaching her arms to the hands upheld for them, was borne safely from her snowy pinnacle to the buffalo cushion. Her father took the horse by the bit, and Mr. Armstrong kept at his side holding Faith firmly to her seat. In this fashion, grasping the bridle with one hand, and resting the other on Mr. Armstrong's shoulder, she was transported to the sleigh at the foot of the hill.
"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith, when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over the Alps!"
Mr. Armstrong understood her.
"It has been beautiful," said he. "I shall begin to expect always to encounter you whenever I get among things wild and wonderful!"
"And yet I have lived all my life, till now, in tame streets," said Faith. "I thought I was getting into tamer places still, when we first came to the country. But I am finding out Kinnicutt. One can't see the whole of anything at once."
"We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does."
Faith was silent.