They began at length to speculate on what had happened. One thing was clear: it was because they were fighting that the man had come; but it was not so clear who the man was. He could not be Christian, because Christian went over the river! Andrew suggested it might have been Evangelist, for he seemed to be always about. Sandy added, as his contribution to the idea, that he might have picked up Christian's bundle and been carrying it home to his wife. They came, however, to the conclusion, by no ratiocination, I think, but by a conviction which the idea itself brought with it, that the stranger was the Lord himself, and that the pack on His back was their sins, which He was carrying away to throw out of the world.
“Eh, wasna it fearfu' He should come by jist when we was fechtin'!” said Sandy.
“Eh, na! it was a fine thing that! We micht hae been at it yet! But we winna noo!—will we ever, Sandy?”
“Na, that we winna!”
“For,” continued Andrew, “He said 'Lo, I am with you always!' And suppose He werena, we daurna be that ahint His back we would na be afore His face!”
“Do you railly think it was Him, Andrew?”
“Weel,” replied Andrew, “gien the deevil be goin' aboot like a roarin' lion, seekin' whom he may devoor, as father says, it's no likely He would na be goin' aboot as weel, seekin' to haud him aff o' 's!”
“Ay!” said Sandy.
“And noo,” said the elder, “what are we to do?”
For Andrew, whom both father and mother judged the dreamiest of mortals, was in reality the most practical being in the whole parish—so practical that by and by people mocked him for a poet and a heretic, because he did the things which they said they believed. Most unpractical must every man appear who genuinely believes in the things that are unseen. The man called practical by the men of this world is he who busies himself building his house on the sand, while he does not even bespeak a lodging in the inevitable beyond.