"Good-night, Vicar."
"Good-night, Hibbert. Forget all about these surface worries and sleep well."
The vicar was left alone.
He took a letter from his pocket. It was from Lucy, who wrote from Park Lane. In the letter, she said that she purposed—if he would care to have her—to come down to Hornham at once and spend some months at the clergy-house.
"If you can put up with a girl for a time in your bachelor stronghold! I'm sick to death of this life; it has lost all its attractions for me. I want to live, not play, and you, my dear old boy, will show me the way. A letter is no way—for me—to tell you of my thoughts. But higher things than of old are working in me. St. Elwyn's calls me, it seems home; I so often think of the big quiet church and the ceaseless activity that centres round it. I long for the peace there! I have much to tell you, much to consult you about, and I am beginning to wonder why I have left you alone so long. Good-night, dear."
Putting down the letter, he looked at the clock. It was now far after midnight, and he stayed the hand that was about to raise the glass that stood on the table beside him.
In a few hours it would be dawn, the dawn when in the dim hour he daily went to meet the Lord in the Eucharist. How wonderful that was! What unending joy the break of day had for this good man, as he began the ancient and mysterious rite of the Church! There, there, beside the altar, there was peace! In this desert world, that was so far from Home, there was always that daily glimpse into the Unseen, that Communion in which dead friends and great angels joined, when the Paraclete came to the weary, sinful hearts of men like fire, when our Lord in his risen majesty came to the world to hearten his soldiers, to fill his toiling saints with power to continue to the end.
If only the whole world knew and realised this! Sometimes the priest thought with simple wonder, that if only men knew, all trouble and sorrow would be over. To him the material world was the unreal place, the dream, the fable. Daily he knew that the Unseen was ever near, close, close!—how blind and sorrowful the world was, that did not know or care for Jesus.
He knelt down now to say his prayers. He prayed for the Church, his congregation, for his sister, and his friends. Then he prayed that he might be worthy to receive the Blessed Sacrament at dawn.
And then, happy, comforted, and at peace, with the certainty of an unseen glory all round him, with august watchers to shield him through the night, he sought his couch and slept a deep, dreamless sleep with crossed hands.