“I think St. Paul was wrong there,” it said. “The greatest of these is Faith.”
It was the young man from the north.
“Faith! What do you mean by faith?”
“The sense of the unseen, and the trust in it,” said he who used to tell the stories of the Glamour-Land. “The man who never loses the sense of that which he does not see, can move the world. All the force side of nature is allied with him. It is the unseen that is the motive power everywhere. The man who in an east-end slum, a city office, a factory, a gambling hell, a music hall, or in the trivial round of society can realise that, has allied himself with the sun and the sea, with the wind and the light, with the Power that lies behind all and causes the whole to be.”
Having thus spoken he wandered out as he had wandered in.
“That’s a queer young fellow,” said the red-haired man, “I think he’s cracked.”
“No,” said one of the listeners, “I think not. He’s a practical chap; quiet, solid, steady-going fellow, and no fool. A good man of business too. I’ve never seen him taken like that before.”
He spoke as though he was the victim of some malady. If this was the case it did not assert itself again. The man worked on steadily and rose in the estimation of his employers, who were very sober, business-like people. When he had been nearly twenty years in London he met the boy who told the pirate stories by the blue sea. The boy was now a man and he told his stories to a wider public; he was married to the girl who wore the crimson coat. He recognised his former brother of the craft, and was very kind and glad to see him; he asked him to his house and insisted on his coming there. He saw, what no one in his guest’s world saw, that such prosperity as was his was not the full measure of that which the promise of his youth once seemed to deserve. He asked him why he had toiled in a London office; why he had ceased to tell the tales of Glamour-Land, of the Wise Queen, and the Black Witch. The other was silent awhile. At last he said: “I couldn’t. That part of me is dead, and buried by the sea up yonder.”
His host said no more at the time; he referred to it once again, very carefully and tactfully.
“No,” said his guest. “I told you I couldn’t. First, because my mind is like a hollow pipe, for other people’s thoughts to blow through. Secondly, because I don’t properly know any of the things I used to know when I was young.”