And Priscilla read:
"'For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you?'"
A silence fell between the old, blind father and the stranger-girl looking yearningly into his face.
"I've conned it this way and that," Glenn said, with his oratorical manner claiming him. "It might be that some worship an Unknown God and the true God might pass by and set things straight. There be altars and altars, and sometimes even my God seems——"
"An Unknown God?" Priscilla asked tenderly. "That must be such a lonely feeling."
"No!" almost shrieked Nathaniel, as if the suggestion insulted him; "no! The true God declared himself to me long since. But what do you make of it, young Miss?"
Priscilla turned her eyes to the open, free outer world, where the sunshine was and the stirring of spring.
"Sometimes," she whispered, "I love to think of God coming down from all the shrines and altars of the world, and walking with his children—in the Garden! They need him so. I do not like altars or shrines; the Garden is the holiest place for God to be!"
"Thou blasphemer!" Glenn struggled to an upright position and his sightless eyes were fixed upon his child. "Wouldst thou desecrate the holy of holies, the altars of the living God?"
"If he is a living God he will not stay upon an altar; he will come and walk with his children!"