"My boy," exclaimed Ottley, "I know no more than you do; but if he is roughing it, as our fellows do up there alone, better wait and see what I can find."
Edwin felt the force of this reasoning, and said no more. Ottley laid his hand on Beauty's rein, and walked beside him.
Suddenly Edwin looked up, exclaiming, "This is Sunday morning!"
"And a strange Sunday it is," answered Ottley, somewhat dreamily, as his thoughts went back to Sundays long ago, bringing with them an echo of the church-going bells, to which his ear had so long been a stranger. "Sunday up country in New Zealand," he went on, "is little beside a name, except to those who can hear the sermon of the stones and read the books—"
"In the running brooks," added Edwin; "and good in everything. But is it so?"
"Nature's voices have been speaking in tones to which all must listen," continued Ottley. "Yet the Lord was not in the earthquake and the storm, but in the still small voice."
His words were slow and grave, so unlike his usual tones Edwin listened in silence, and in silence they approached the ford. Even Beauty's footsteps were inaudible, for the mud by the river had not dried as fast as elsewhere.
The boy's heart was heavy with apprehension as he looked up, expecting to see the familiar gate; but not one trace of post or gate remained. The acacia tree in which the lamp used to hang was riven asunder. The grassy mound and the gorse hedge were gone. The road had been raised by the mud and dust to the level of the farm-yard wall. Almost without knowing they did so, they went straight over it, and found themselves even with the window of the hay-loft. The roof of the house was crushed in, and its doors and windows banked up with mud. As they looked round at it, Edwin pointed to the hole his father must have made when he extricated his friend's family. A man was getting out of it at the moment. They stood quite still and watched him draw up a full sack after him.
"There is some one before us on the same errand," said Edwin; but Ottley hushed him without replying.
The man looked round as Edwin's voice broke the profound stillness. Ottley shouted to him, "Wait where you are, mate, and I will come to your help."