Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes, Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House.
"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery; but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret of its power."
At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with family prayer, and his prayer ran thus—
"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and very foolish; his eyes are holden so that he can not see the operations of Thy Hands; but he is not very far from Thy Kingdom. Lead him, Heavenly Father, in the way that he should go; open his eyes that he may behold the hidden things of Thy Law; look upon him and love him, as Thou didst aforetime another young man who had great possessions. Lord, tell him that this earth is only Thy footstool; show him that the beauty he sees all around him is the hem of Thy garment; and teach him that the wisdom of this world is but foolishness with Thee. And this we beg, O Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen."
Thus Caleb prayed, and Alan could not hear him, and could not have understood him even if he had heard.
But there was One who heard, and understood.
[CHAPTER VII]
BROADER VIEWS
He proved that Man is nothing more
Than educated sod,
Forgetting that the schoolmen's lore
Is foolishness with God.