"Mother," concluded the son, "I feel as if we had made some mistake; as if there must be more to learn. And I have come home to search and see."
Then once more, as on that first night of the old man's departure, Hope unrolled the scroll he had left behind, and the three sat into the night and drank in the enlightening words.
And now they learned the second half of the tidings. The passages over which, in the first joy of the discovery of the New World, they had passed hastily as mere trite and familiar truths, now shone out on them as the very directions they needed.
They learned how for thirty years the King's Son had lived quietly in the Island, doing its ordinary work, before for those three years He went about proclaiming why He came.
Of those precious years which He had sojourned among them, tenfold more time had been spent in doing what every man must do, than in doing what He seemed to have come especially to do.
In the word He had left to guide His own, tenfold more space was given to directions how to do His will in this land of exile than to revealing the glories of the abiding Home.
From the Everlasting Hills, and the Golden City, and the many mansions, the veil was lifted but for rare glimpses. On every step of the daily path shone for those who sought it a full daylight, in which no one need go astray.
Thus once more as they read, the Island, which had dwindled to a peak of sea-washed rock, expanded into a beauty and significance greater than ever.
For the Island was not merely a fragment broken off from the Continent.
It was an integral part of the Kingdom. The laws of the Royal City were its laws. The lowliest right work of its inhabitants was the King's work.