"But I'd have no content," said Barnabas, "nor wish to have, without ye had it too. No, not in heaven—it 'ud be hell an' I lost ye, Margaret!"
"Hush!" cried Meg, amazed. "Do you think it is right to say that?"
"Ay, I do; most right," he said, with the strong conviction in his voice that Meg always felt overpowered argument. "Shall I think better than my Master? Was He content in heaven? An' He had been, He'd not ha' drawn us after Him, lass. I'm not feared o' loving ye too much," he went on rather sadly. "Happen, if I love ye enough, I'll learn in time not to scare ye; an' then th' next old wife ye meet won't leave ye fit to drown yourself wi' her tales o' men's wickedness! So ye think we made a great mistake, eh? an' ha' both repented? For me, I ha' not repented. It wur a clear teaching, an' naught's a mistake that's right. An' it seems so afterwards, that's part o' th' witcheries o' th' devil. Still, ye think so?" drawing his light-coloured eyebrows together in perplexity, but with a patient attempt to follow her thought that touched Meg.
"You were doing what you believed right," she said. "I was very miserable and Aunt Russelthorpe hated me, and I her, and father was away, and it was easier to go—anywhere—than to stay. I did really believe it was 'a call' too; it wasn't only discontent. I must have been wrong, though, or it would have turned out right," Meg said, with a simplicity that was always part of her character. "But, when I look back, I can't disentangle my motives nor even remember exactly what I felt then; I was so different, and knew so little——"
"I'd let it be," said Barnabas. "There doesna seem much doubt to me."
He paused a moment. There was never "much doubt" to him about anything. It was hardly possible to this man, who was essentially a man of action, of unhesitating zeal, to comprehend self-torturing uncertainty.
Then his love for her gave him the sympathy which he could never have reached intellectually.
"But, happen, I doan't rightly understand," he said gently. "Well, He understan's, whose strength is stronger nor our sins, an' His wisdom nor our mistakes. Say it wur a sin an' a mistake, lass!—tho', mind, it's not I who'll ever think so—even then, He can bring ye past it. Failure isn't for us who are on His side. Things hide themsel's an' take queer shapes i' th' smoke o' th' battle; but in th' end the shadows 'ull roll away, an' the day be His an' ours!" cried Barnabas.
Meg, looking at him, knew how he saw that battlefield, where the Man of Sorrows stood alone triumphant.
Well, the preacher's arguments might not always convince now; but yet, so long as she lived, his unswerving devotion would wake an answering chord in her. It is, after all, what a man is that impresses us; and the reflection of the Eternal goodness in our neighbour's soul refreshes ours, be the neighbour broad or narrow, of our creed or of his own!