"If you cannot I can carry you," said Mr. Linden.—And doubtless he would have found some way to make his words good had there been need; as it was, he only guarded her down the steep rocky way, going before her and holding her hand in a grasp she would have been puzzled to get away from. But Faith was light and free of foot, and gave him no trouble. Once at the bottom, she went straight towards those in-coming big waves, and in front of them stood still. The sea-breeze blew in her face; the roar of the breakers made music in her ears. Faith folded one hand upon the other, and stood motionless. Now and then the wind caught the spray from some beaten rock and flung it in her face, and wave after wave rose up and donned its white crest; the upstanding green water touched with sunlight and shadow, and changing tints of amber and olive, down which the white foam came curling and rushing—sweeping in knots of seaweed, and leaving all the pebbles with wet faces. Mr. Linden let her look without the interruption of a word; but he presently put his arm round her, and drew her a little into shelter from the strong breeze. It was a while before she moved from her steady gaze at the water; then she looked up, the joy of her face breaking into a smile.
"Endecott, will you show me anything more grand than this?"
"You shall tell me when you have seen the uprising mists of Niagara," he answered, smiling, "or the ravines between snowcaps 'five thousand summers old.'"
Her eye went back to the sea. "It brings before me, somehow," she said slowly, "all time, and all eternity! I have been thinking here of myself as I was a little child, and as I shall be, and as I am," she added, with her inveterate exactness, and blushing. "I seem to see only the great scale of everything."
"Tell me a little more clearly what you see," said Mr. Linden.
"It isn't worth telling. I see everything here as belonging to God. The world seems his great work-place, and life his time for doing the work, and I—and you," she said, with a flash of light coming across her face, "his work-people. And those great breaking waves, somehow, seem to me like the resistless, sure, beautiful, doings of his providence." She spoke very quietly, because she was bidden, evidently.
"Do you know how many other things they are like?—or rather how many are likened to them in the Bible?"—"No! I don't know the Bible as you do."
"They seem to be a never-failing image—an illustration suiting very different things. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest,' and then, 'O that thou hadst hearkened to me I then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.'"
"There is the endless struggle of human will and purpose against the divine—'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.' 'Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail: though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?' And so in another place the image is reversed, and God says, 'Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.' Could anything be more forcible?"
A look was Faith's answer; it spoke the kindled thoughts at work.