For Mervyn's words had recalled to him in a flash the half-forgotten memory of Ned Blackborough's hidden money, and his mind attuned to miracles, super-sensitised to the direct dealings of Providence with man, leapt to the conclusion that the hundred pounds, so idly, so carelessly flung away on what appeared a mere fancy, was in truth a heavenly provision against this urgent need.
The thought explained so much. The devil of greed within him, which had urged him to take the money for his own use--the gradual unfolding, through this temptation, of the desire for some outpouring of the Spirit. Here were more marvels than he had time at present to consider. The great fact was sufficient, that in the wilderness the table had been spread.
"It was wrong to take the money, Merve," he said, his face suffused with a heavenly joy; "we must not forget that--we must weep and pray over that; but it was for His service, and He has forgiven us--the money is found!"
"But when--that is the point," began Mervyn anxiously; "it must be by to-morrow morning, and it is late----"
"You will wake to find it on the Bible by your bedside, my brother," interrupted Morris solemnly, "and then we will give thanks unto the Lord, for He hath done marvellous things. Come to supper now; our mother will be anxious at our delay. Leave the rest in His hands."
The moon was riding high amid the stars when Morris Pugh, closing the door of the sleeping cottage behind him with a whispered benediction on its inmates, started for his climb to the gap where Ned Blackborough had hidden the hundred pounds. The night air struck chill, for it was late October, but he was in far too exalted a frame of mind to consider such earthly things as overcoats or comforters. His exaltation, indeed, would have seemed incredible even to the self of six weeks ago; for, despite his enthusiasm, he had been hard-headed and practical enough. Now, enervated by constant use of his emotions, it seemed to him--full to the brim as he was by right of his Cymric birth with imaginative fire, poetry passion--that he was going up into the mountain alone to meet his Lord and receive a gift from His hands.
He felt as Moses must have felt on Pisgah, as St. Jerome felt when the last Sacrament was vouchsafed to him. Those last few weeks had made an ecstatic out of the enthusiast. He saw nothing but his Lord, he heard nothing but the call to come.
Marvellous! Most marvellous!
Yes! of a truth! for about him--to him unseen--lay the great marvel of the Real Presence in the world, above him the marvel of the Real Presence in the skies and stars. But the stones were to his eager feet but stumbling-blocks, the glory of the starlight and the moonlight was but the halo of a concrete heaven.
Still it was very rapture; worth in itself a thousand times the petty hundred pounds which had called it into being. Put into bald English, here was a man going to take money which he wot of, in order to save his brother from disgrace. Translated into the terms of emotional religion, here was a sinner about to find salvation.