"'Effie,' I said, 'I've brought you here to say a great word and I felt it ought to be said in the fairest place in the world. This is the loveliest place I know and if I knew a fairer one I'd have taken you there. The word I am going to say is the one God said when it was dark and He decided to make it light. It's the word He said when the world was tired and He decided to send His Son and it's the one word the Son spoke that has been changing the world since. That word is, Love!' Then I felt my own unworthiness and I stammered and I lost something out o' my speech and I've never found it, but I added,—'I'm only a fisherman but what I want to give you is as much as I can of the very same love.'
"Sir, that was all I had to say and she understood. Right after that a strange thing happened. It had been clouding up and it began to snow. Yes, we have once in a while a snow storm in summer, and we did that year. Then I took the great coat I had brought and wrapped her tenderly up in it and I said: Love has a good many duties, but I guess one on'em is to keep you warm.
"The snow came down and it covered the earth, but it didn't cover the blossoms and there was a world of white with pink beauty scattered on it, all the spruce and firs standing and looking and worshipping, if trees worship. And I said: I guess it's the Lord's way of saying, He's glad it's all settled. Now, if He had sent the rain we might a doubted, but He's sent the snow so's we wouldn't doubt and we never have.
"Now our trains sometimes take an uncommon long time, and you folks from the States laugh at our railroads, but do you know I never went a journey where the train made such a fast time as that night. We were in St. John's afore we knew it."
[CHAPTER IV]
SOME MIRACLES
"You orter been here a short while ago," Jim chuckled, as he addressed his friend Bob McCartney, who entered soon after Mr. Jewett had left. "We had a queer one here who believed you and I and the rest o' the sinners were out o' sight of the Lord. Told us the Lord didn't know nothing except the good and this world was just shadows and delusions."