"It's the miracle, isn't it?" said the girl.
It was the miracle indeed.
* * * * *
There was no auction in Thingvellir that day, and when the bells rang for service the company went to church. The little wooden tabernacle was full of worshippers, for it was New Year's Day, and the farmers had ridden over with their families from all the country round about. They sat, in their thick mufflers and snow-stockings and the mist of their smoking breath, as far up the church as the square rail enclosing the communion table, on stools about the octagonal pulpit and even among the refuse, the lumber and potted-meat barrels that were stored in the gallery.
The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.
Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson ("All we like sheep have gone astray"), while he gave out his text ("This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise"), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death's sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem ("Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning"), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin's silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother's, Magnus sat with his face toward the picture on the wall above the communion-table.
It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.
That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit of war with God, he had entered the stranger's bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, "Stop! or the voice of thy brother's blood will cry unto Me from the ground!"
When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumor of what had happened in Anna's household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.
The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm, for a cup of coffee.