"Ugh!" said yet another—"rather you than me! Such exposures are terrible!" and he shuddered at the picture his imagination had been drawing.
"They may be terrible, and I suppose that they are so, to some people," was the quiet reply. "Habit is every thing, no doubt. Some of you might walk into battle, if you have been there before, a good deal more coolly than I could do, even though you had a good deal more to sacrifice in life than myself in the event of a bullet going astray."
"Bullets never go astray, nor do men fall down the rocks accidentally!" put in a breakfaster who wore a white neckcloth but no mock-sanctimonious visage. "I am afraid, brothers, that you all forget the Overruling Hand which guides all things and prevents what thoughtless people call 'accidents.'"
"Ah!" said Horace Townsend. "Domine, do you carry fatalism, or predestination, if you like the word any better,—so far as to believe that every step of a man is supernaturally protected?"
"It is supernaturally ordered, beyond a doubt: it may be protected, or quite the opposite," was the minister's smiling reply. "And I might go a step further and say that every man is supernaturally upheld, when doing a great duty, however dangerous, so that that result may follow, whether it come in life or death, in success or failure—which may be eventually best for him as well as best for the interests of heaven and earth, all men and all time."
"A sublime thought, and one that may be worth calling to mind a good many times in life!" was all the reply that the lawyer made, and he took no further part in the conversation. He sat back in his chair, the moment after; and Margaret Hayley (who had now become to some extent his "observer," as he had erewhile filled the same office to Halstead Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn)—Margaret Hayley, sitting at a considerable distance up the table on the opposite side, saw that his face seemed strangely moved, and that there was intense thought in the eye that looked straight forward and yet apparently gazed on vacancy.
Meanwhile the Rambler had not yet ceased to be an object of interest; and a little warning (such as he had undoubtedly heard a good many times during his strange life) was to follow the inquiries and the speculations.
"Then you probably do not think, Domine," said one of the interlocutors in response to the remark which seemed to have struck Horace Townsend so forcibly, "that our friend here is under any especial supernatural protection when climbing up and down places where he has no errand whatever except his own amusement."
"I might think so, if I had the power to decide that he was really attempting no good whatever to himself or others," was the reply. "But as I cannot so decide, though I certainly think such exposures of life very imprudent, I shall be very careful not to express any such opinion."
"Well, sir, I certainly wish you no harm," said another, "but if all accounts are true, I think that you expose yourself very recklessly, and I expect, some day, to hear that the pitcher you have carried once too often to the well is broken at last."