They went on together through the pasture and up into the wood lot. They came out upon an unexpected opening in the wood, at the beginning of a great gash in the hillside. At the center of this opening was a huge boulder, surrounded by hazel-nut bushes, to which the brown leaves still clung.
"You can climb up easily from the back. Let me show you," said Janice, who had by now got control of her tears, and was more like her smiling, cheerful self.
She ran up the incline, sure-footed as a goat; but at the more difficult place she gave the minister her hand. He was much more breathless than she when they stood together upon the overhanging rock.
Below them was the steep, wooded hillside, and the broken pastures and scattered houses north of Poketown, along the shore of the lake. This spot was on the promontory that flanked the bay upon one side. From this point it seemed that all of the great lake, with both its near and distant shores, lay spread at their feet!
In the northwest frowned the half-ruined fortress, so heroic a landmark of pre-Revolutionary times. Nearer lay the wooded, rocky isle where a celebrated Indian chief had made his last stand against the encroaching whites. Yonder was the spot where certain of those bold pioneers and fighters, the Green Mountain Boys, embarked under their famous leaders, Allen and Warner, upon an expedition that historians will never cease to write of.
It was a noble, as well as a beautiful, view. God's world did look bigger and greater from The Overlook. Sitting by her side, the minister held the girl's hand, and listened to her artless expressions. She told him quite frankly what all this view meant to her,—how it helped and soothed her worried spirit, brought comfort to her grieving heart. Here were many square miles of God's Footstool under her gaze; and there were many, many thousands of other spots like this between her and the Mexican mountains in which her father was held a prisoner. And God had the same care over one bit of landscape as he did over another!
"Then," she said, softly, in conclusion, "then I just seem to grasp the idea of God's bigness—and how much He has to do. I won't complain. I'll wait. And meanwhile I'll do, if I can, what Daddy told me to."
"What is that, Janice?" asked the minister, still gazing out over the vast outlook himself.
"I must do something,—keep to work, you know. Try and make things better. You know: 'Each in his small corner.' And there's so much to be done in Poketown!"
"So much—in Poketown?" ejaculated the minister, suddenly brought out of his reverie.