The work was slow—the impression on the hard iron of the worn file so weak that he was often on the point of giving up the attempt. Fatigue at length began to invade him, and therewith the sense of his situation grew more keen: great weariness overcomes terror; the beginnings of weariness enhance it. Every now and then he would stop, thinking he heard the cry of a child, only to recognize it as the noise of his file. He resolved at last to stop for the night, and after tea go to the town to buy a new and fitter file.
The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon Donal and Davie were walking in the old avenue together. They had been to church, and had heard a dull sermon on the most stirring fact next to the resurrection of the Lord himself—his raising of Lazarus. The whole aspect of the thing, as presented by the preaching man, was so dull and unreal, that not a word on the subject had passed between them on the way home.
“Mr. Grant, how could anybody make a dead man live again?” said Davie suddenly.
“I don’t know, Davie,” answered Donal. “If I could know how, I should probably be able to do it myself.”
“It is very hard to believe.”
“Yes, very hard—that is, if you do not know anything about the person said to have done it, to account for his being able to do it though another could not. But just think of this: if one had never seen or heard about death, it would be as hard, perhaps harder, to believe that anything could bring about that change. The one seems to us easy to understand, because we are familiar with it; if we had seen the other take place a few times, we should see in it nothing too strange, nothing indeed but what was to be expected in certain circumstances.”
“But that is not enough to prove it ever did take place.”
“Assuredly not. It cannot even make it look in the least probable.”
“Tell me, please, anything that would make it look probable.”
“I will not answer your question directly, but I will answer it. Listen, Davie.