Ely Minster had withdrawn itself entirely into the night, but to one so familiar with its contour as Annys, it was easy to carve it out from the surrounding darkness; to him it still dominated the landscape as at high noon. He recalled the defiance which he had launched at it as he had stood before it in the November gloaming.
"Be not over triumphant, even now," he murmured; "thou art doomed to bow thy haughty head in this land of stalwart men."
Perhaps it was not yet too late to redeem himself. Surely that great God who had put the breath of life into his nostrils could at will fill his loins with strength. Perhaps he had succumbed too readily. He would have faith.
"I would seek unto God," Job's prayer rose to his lips, "and unto God would I commit my cause, which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number."
The wind that had stirred lazily through the reeds now suddenly freshened. Gathering strength, at last it whipped the fog before it, scurrying across the land. As it parted the white veil before the cathedral, the moon was just peeping above the roof. As it sailed over the octagon it left Ely Minster below, carven out of the impenetrable night—etched against the brightening sky, it stood out grimmer, gloomier, than ever.
As the moon climbed the heavens, the beams rested on the rugged pile. Little by little its frown was smoothed out, a tremor swept over it, and it smiled. No longer fearsome, no longer wrapped in gloom, it appeared in the soft radiance, a celestial vision. The arcades of pointed arches, the exquisite stone parapet, the pinnacled turrets of the divine octagon, the noble towers, all stood forth in their fairylike delicacy of detail, and yet in all the simple majesty of the complete creation.
His heart beat tumultuously. The spectacle seemed to him too beautiful for the eyes of man to behold. To him there was a desecration—a sacrilegiousness—in his presence there as this glorious being bared her full loveliness to her lover night.
Then there came a voice into the wind—the voice that had appeared unto Isaiah of old:—
"Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not cast thee away; fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."