And gives His answering messages to thee."
—C. Pennefather.
Brief sleep, if any, had John Grayson that Sunday morning. As so often heretofore he could not sleep for pain or sorrow, now he could not sleep for rest. The sense of the peace that was all around him was too new, too wonderful. He soon arose from that fair, snow-white English bed, with its pure linen smelling of lavender, to wander out over the dewy lawn, where the morning sun touched everything with glory. The birds sang aloud to welcome the new day—the long, long day—every hour of it to be filled with their innocent joy. One sweet-voiced blackbird lighted on a rose-bush close to him, and sang. They seemed to have no fear. In this happy land fear did not reign. No doubt it was there—often—for England, after all, was earth and not heaven; but it was a shadow lurking in dark places, not an eclipse blotting out the sun, a presence darkening all the joy of life.
But this blessed peace only stamped deeper upon Jack's heart the memory of that far land of agony and blood. "If I forget thee, O Armenia," he said aloud, "let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not thee above my chief joy. My chief joy," he thought again, "lies buried there, and can never live for me upon this earth. But, by that grave, by that dead love, or rather by that love that can never die, I am pledged not to rest in happy England, but to work for sad Armenia, and to wait for my Sabbath keeping until we keep it all together in the Home above."
He did not know how long it was before his cousin came out to summon him to their early Sunday breakfast. Fred's voice had lost the joyful ring it had at their first meeting. He looked like a strong man who had just heard of a great bereavement. Lucy, waiting to receive him in her fresh Sunday dress, with her look of peace and purity, felt vaguely that there was sadness in the air, but her mind was too full of her Sunday-school class to dwell upon that subject.
"Will you come with us to church?" Fred asked his cousin.
Jack looked surprised at the question. "Certainly," he said. "Why not?"
"Because I have to say that which will give you pain—yet I cannot forbear. You have given me my sermon for to-day."
Nevertheless John Grayson joined the stream of church-goers: fathers, and mothers, and little children, old men and old women coming in together, while the rosy-cheeked Sunday scholars took their appointed places. He looked round with strangely mingled feelings on the old country church, which was without elaborate ornament, although seemly and reverent in all its appointments, as befitted a house of God. But what most arrested him was the "fair white cloth" on the Holy Table, showing that the Feast of the Lord was spread that day. He had never yet partaken of it in the Church of his fathers; but he no more doubted his right to come than the child doubts his right to sit down at his father's table, because it is spread in a strange room. It was a joy to look forward to that; it was a joy meanwhile to join once more, though with trembling lips, in the dear, familiar prayers-those prayers "that sound like church bells in the ears of the English child."