But although Cupples could say much to set Annie thinking, and although she did find enlightenment at last from pondering over his words, yet she could have told him far deeper things than he had yet suspected to exist. For she knew that the goal of all life is the face of God. Perhaps she had to learn a yet higher lesson: that our one free home is the Heart, the eternal lovely Will of God, than that which should fail, it were better that we and all the worlds should go out in blackness. But this Will is our Salvation. Because He liveth we shall live also.
Mr Cupples found in the missionar kirk a certain fervour which pleased him. For Mr Turnbull, finding that his appeals to the ungodly were now of little avail to attract listeners of the class, had betaken himself to the building up of the body of Christ, dwelling in particular upon the love of the brethren. But how some of them were to be loved, except with the love of compassionate indignation, even his most rapt listener Thomas Crann could not have supposed himself capable of explaining. As I said, however, Mr Cupples found the sermon in some degree impressive, and was attentive. As he was walking away, questioning with himself, he heard a voice in the air above him. It came from the lips of Thomas Crann, who, although stooping from asthma and rheumatism, still rose nearly a foot above the head of Mr Cupples.
"I was glaid to see ye at oor kirk, sir," said Thomas.
"What for that?" returned the librarian, who always repelled first approaches, in which he was only like Thomas himself, and many other worthy people, both Scotch and English.
"A stranger sud aye be welcomed to onybody's hoose."
"I didna ken it was your hoose."
"Ow na. It's no my hoose. It's the Lord's hoose. But a smile frae the servan'-lass that opens the door's something till a man that gangs to ony hoose for the first time, ye ken," returned Thomas, who, like many men of rough address, was instantly put upon his good behaviour by the exhibition of like roughness in another.
This answer disarmed Cupples. He looked up into Thomas's face, and saw first a massive chin; then a firmly closed mouth; then a nose, straight as a Greek's, but bulky and of a rough texture; then two keen grey eyes, and lastly a big square forehead supported by the two pedestals of high cheek bones�-the whole looking as if it had been hewn out of his professional granite, or rather as if the look of the granite had passed into the face that was so constantly bent over it fashioning the stubborn substance to the yet more stubborn human will. And Cupples not only liked the face, but felt that he was in the presence of one of the higher natures of the world�-made to command, or rather, which is far better, to influence. Before he had time to reply, however, Thomas resumed:
"Ye hae had a heap o' tribble, I doobt, wi' that laddie, Alec Forbes."
"Naething mair nor was nateral," answered Cupples.