The cab was rolling through the wide squares and streets of Bloomsbury. In three or four minutes it would arrive at Euston.
"You will soon be in splendid health, old fellow," Hampson said, anxious to turn the conversation into an ordinary and conventional channel. "Meanwhile, I'll have a cigarette. You mustn't smoke, of course, but you won't grudge me the single comfort that my poor health allows me?"
He felt in his pocket for the packet of cigarettes that he had bought that morning. Then, quite suddenly, he paused.
A sense of the tremendous incongruity of the present situation came to him.
He was riding in a London cab to a London station. He was going to see a sick friend start in a modern train for healing airs and a quiet sojourn among the hills.
And yet—and yet he firmly believed—almost knew, indeed—that this friend, this man who was called Joseph, was, so to speak, under the especial convoy of the Holy Ghost!
It was incredible! Were there indeed miracles going on each day in the heart of modern London? Was the world the same, even now, as it was in the old, dim days when Jesus the Lord walked among the valleys and the hills of Palestine?
Euston and cabs, and yet the modern world was full of mystery, of wonder. Yes, indeed, God ruled now as He had always ruled.
Joseph was going towards some divinely-appointed goal! He had been told nothing of the vision which had made Lluellyn Lys, the recluse of Wales, write to Mary, commanding her to send him to his mountains. He was moving blindly to meet his destiny.
Yet soon Joseph also would know what his friends knew. And with that knowledge—