* * * * *
Barton decided to avail himself of the kindness of Mr. Windsor, and quietly made his arrangements accordingly. The summer was very pleasant to him. He devoted himself with his usual ardor to his books, but gave much of his leisure to Ida, who began to feel the approach of a calamity that gradually extinguished the light in her eyes. She was already suffering—although not anticipating a serious result—a pressure in the forehead, and a gradual impairing of vision, without pain. Under its shadow, that no medical art could dissipate, she found a wonderful solace in the tender devotion of her newly found brother, who read to her, walked with her, and occasionally rode with her, in all tender, manly ways surrounding her with an atmosphere of kind and loving observances, which she more than repaid, with the strong, healthy and pure womanly influence, which she exercised over him.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE INVITATION.
Late one wondrously beautiful August night, as Bart was returning from a solitary stroll, he was suddenly joined by Sartliff, bare-headed and bare-footed, who placed his hand within his arm, and turning him about, walked him back towards the wood. Bart had not seen him for weeks, and he thought his face was thinner and more haggard, and his eyes more cavernous than he had ever seen them.
"What progress are you making?" asked Bart, quietly.
"I am getting increase of power. I don't know that I need light; I think I want strength. I hear the voices oftener, and they are wonderfully sweeter; I find that they consist of marvelous musical sounds, and I can distinguish some notes; meanings are conveyed by them. If I could only comprehend and interpret them. I shall in time if I can hold out. I find as the flesh becomes more spirit-like, that this power increases. If I only had some fine-fibred soul who could take this up where I must leave it! Barton, you believe God communicates with men through other than his ordinary works?"
"I don't know; I see and hear God in the wondrous symbols of nature; when they say that he speaks directly, I don't feel so certain. I am so made up, that the very nature, the character and quality of the evidence, is unequal to the facts to be proven, and so to produce conviction. If a score of you were to say to me, that in the forest to-day, you saw a fallen and decayed tree arise and strike down new roots, and shoot out new branches, and unfold new foliage and flowers, I would not believe it: Nor, though five hundred men should swear that they saw a grave heave up, and its tenant come forth to life and beauty, would I believe. The quality of the evidence is not equal to sustain the burthen of the fact to be established, and it does not help the matter, that alleged proofs come to me through uncertain historical media. Yet I can't say that I disbelieve. Who can say that there is not within us a religious spiritual faculty, or a set of faculties, that take impressions, and receive communications, not through the ordinary perceptions and convictions of the mere mind—that sees and hears, retains and transmits, loves, hopes and worships, in a spiritual or religious atmosphere of its own; whose memories are superstitions, whose realizations are extatic visions, and whose hopes are the future of blessedness; and that it is through these faculties that religious sentiments are received, transmitted and propagated, and to which God speaks and acts, spirit to spirit, as matter to matter? Who can tell how many sets of faculties are possible to us? We may have developed only a few of the lowest. I sometimes fancy that I feel the rudiments of a higher and finer set within me. Who shall say that I have them not?"
"Go on, Barton; I like to hear you unfold yourself," said Sartliff.
"I can't," said Bart, "I can only vaguely talk about what I so vaguely feel."