"Is there a God behind it all, I wonder?" he thought as thunder-clap followed thunder-clap, and the whole heavens were lit up with streaks of light. "If there is, does He care? Yes, there is a God, there must be. I wonder if that woman was right? Did Jesus Christ come to tell us what God was like? Is there any meaning in that story? She believes it, and she says that that man Aaron Goudge found peace in it. I wonder, now; I wonder."
"God help me!" he cried presently. It was an involuntary prayer. It had passed his lips even before he knew, and yet, although he knew it not, it was the natural expression of a soul in torment.
He laughed aloud. "I've been praying," he said. "Well, why not? I wonder now if God cares? Would He hear me if I spoke to Him?"
The thought struck him as curious. He had scarcely ever prayed in his life, but somehow there was a meaning in it now. Some words came back to his mind, like the memory of some forgotten dream. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Heavenly Father. Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened unto you."
Who said that? Yes, it was Jesus, the Man of Galilee, who claimed to be the Son of God. Was God His Father? Well, and why should he not pray?
Perhaps it was because of the experience through which he had been passing, perhaps it was because of the storm which swept in mad fury across the moors, or perhaps it was because of a deeper reason which no man can put into words, but Leicester knelt down on the heather and prayed while the lightnings flashed and the thunder rolled.
He uttered no wild, incoherent cries, he scarcely spoke a word; but he prayed, and as he prayed the whole of his life seemed to sweep before him. Things forgotten, thoughts that were strange, visions seen only from afar came to him. There was something awesome, majestic about it all—the storm-tossed man pouring out his soul to his Maker, amidst the storm-rent heavens.
"Great God, tell me what to do, and I'll do it," he said at length. No voice came out of the skies, no message came to him from out of the angry winds. The storm still swept on in wild fury. How long he knelt he knew not, it might have been hours, but he knew that he had entered deep in the heart of things. A man who really prays enters into an experience to which the prayerless man is a stranger. What thoughts passed through his mind I cannot tell; perhaps he could not have told himself—he only knew that the foundations of his life had been broken up. He realised what he had been, he knew what he was. He saw life as he had never seen it before—saw how poor and vain were the thoughts of man, how great were the thoughts of God. The great deeps seemed to be revealed to him, and he knew that no man lives unless he links himself to the Eternal Heart, the Heart made real by the Son of God, who lived and died. The reasonings of man seemed but the crying of children; the logic of the schoolmen no more than children's castles on the sands. There were great deeps beyond all their theories, deeps never to be understood by the mind, but felt by the soul. God had spoken.
When he rose to his feet, he also knew that he had risen from the dead. There was a new life in his heart, and he was conscious of it. The Radford Leicester of hours before, and the Radford Leicester of now, were different. He had passed from death unto life.
For a time he walked on, almost unheeding whither he went, but presently, as the sky became clearer, he saw the dim outline of the tor which had been his landmark. As he saw it, he realised that he was not more than an hour's walk from Vale Linden. In two hours or so he would see Olive again, and he would tell her what was right for him to tell. For he knew what he had to do now. The only course was the right course, and he must walk in it. He knew what it meant, too. When he told Olive who he was, and related the story of the past six years, she would bid him go away, as she had bidden him long ago; but he must tell her all. He owed it to her, and he would pay his debt. The future was not in his hands, but in God's, and he would fight against his Maker no longer.