Then he spurred his horse forward, and something in her seemed to snap. From the dream-present the woman was thrust roughly back into her past. The sunlight faded away before her eyes, oozing from the air in drop after drop of golden splendour, the songs of the birds died, the murmuring of the brook became an angry brawl that accused the world of wickedness. The morning fled. From a distance, far away, farther than Harney, farther than the sky, the stranger's brown eyes looked pityingly. Her sin was no longer animal. It had touched her soul. Instead of an incident it had become a condition which hemmed her in, from which she could not escape. Suddenly she saw the difference. She dwelt in darkness; he, with his clear soul, dwelt in light. She threw herself face downward on the earth, weeping and clutching the grass in the agony of her sin.
Then a new sound smote the air. She sat upright and listened.
Around the bend she heard a high-pitched voice declaiming in measured tones.
"'Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations,'" the voice chanted.
"'The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth all that he bowed down.'"
The speaker strode in sight. He was one of the old-fashioned itinerant preachers occasionally seen in the Hills, filled with fanatic enthusiasm, journeying from place to place on foot, exhorting by the fear of hell fire rather than by the hope of heaven's bliss, half-crazy, half-inspired, wholly in earnest. His form was gaunt. He was clad in a shiny black coat buttoned closely, and his shoes showed dusty and huge beneath his carefully turned-up trousers. A beaver of ancient pattern was pushed far back from his narrow forehead, and from beneath it flashed vividly his fierce hawk-eyes. Over his shoulder, suspended from a cane, was a carpet-bag. He stepped eagerly forward with an immense excess of nervous force that carried him rapidly on. Nothing more out of place could be imagined than this comical figure against the simplicity of the hills. Yet for that very reason he was the more grateful to the woman's perturbed soul. She listened eagerly for his next words.
He strode fiercely across the stones of the little ford, declaiming with energy, with triumph:
"'The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in due season.
"'Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.
"'The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.