So prayed Bayard, while her bright head lay upon his breast with the delicate and gentle surrender of the girl who will be wife before another sun goes down.
Out upon the piazza of the Flying Jib the Professor was entertaining visitors, by whose call the lovers were not disturbed. The Reverend George Fenton had unexpectedly and vaguely appeared upon the scene. He was accompanied by a lean, thoughtful man, with clerical elbows and long, rustic legs, being no other than Tompkinton of Cesarea and the army cape. Professor Carruth had taken his two old students into the confidence of the family crisis. The Reverend Mr. Fenton looked troubled.
“I had a feeling that something was wrong. I have been impressed for days with a sense that I ought to see Bayard—to help him, you know—to offer him any assistance in my power. He is in such a singular position! He leads such a singular life, Professor! It is hard for a man situated as I am, to know precisely what to do.”
“The only thing that can be done for him, just now, that I see,” suggested the Professor dryly, “is to find him a supply for Sunday. His marriage to my daughter will, of necessity, involve a short absence from his missionary duties.”
“I wish I could preach for him!” cried Fenton eagerly. “I should like nothing better. I should love to do so much for him. He never has any supplies or vacations, like the rest of us. Now I think of it, nobody has been near his pulpit for three years, to help him out—I mean nobody whom we should recognize. I’ve half a mind to consult my committee. The First Church”—
“I will preach for Bayard,” interrupted Tompkinton with his old, slow manner. “My church is so small—we are not important across the Cape, there—it is not necessary for me to consult my committee. I will preach for him with all my heart; in the evening at all events—all day, if the Professor here will find me a supply of some sort.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” observed the Professor quietly; “I will accept your offer, Tompkinton, for the evening. I shall myself occupy Mr. Bayard’s pulpit in Windover town hall on Sunday morning.”
“You, Professor?”
Fenton turned pale. Tompkinton gave that little lurch to his shoulders with which, for so many years, he had jerked on the army cape in cold weather. Tompkinton was well dressed, now, well settled, well to do, but the same simple, manly fellow. There was the gentleman in this grandson of the soil, this educated farmer’s boy; and an instinct as true as the spirit of the faith which he preached in the old, unnoticed ways, and with the old, unobserved results. Tompkinton spent his life in conducting weekly prayer meetings, in comforting old people in trouble, and in preaching what he had been taught, as he had been taught it. But he was neither a coward nor a cad for that.