'Gyda's fireside was the corner I meant,it's not dark just now! and I was thinking, that from this nook of quiet the work looks easy. So it is! It is a hand to hand and foot to foot battle; but it is easy to follow the captain that one loves.'
'I don't know that it is always easy,' said Dr. Arthur; 'but it can be done. Once in a while, you know, we are sent to carry a redoubt with only his orders before us. The Lord himself seems to be in quite another part of the field.'
'That is, to those who do not know.'
'Of course. I speak only of the seeming. But I like the fight, and I like the struggle. I like to measure battlements and prepare my scaling ladders, and lead a forlorn hope. It suits me, I believe.'
'Battlements?' Hazel repeated. 'Do you mean heights of difficulty?'
'Guarded by depths of sin,' said Dr. Arthur.
Hazel looked from one to the other. Yes, she could like that too, if she were a man. How much could she do, being a woman?
'And that is all seeming too, Arthur,' his friend went on. 'Really, the fighter need never be out of that "feste Burg." I was thinking just now, not only that work looks easy, but that it looks small. Individual effort, I mean; the utmost that any one man can do. It is a mere speck. The living waters that shall be "a river to swim in," are very shallow yet; and where the fishers are to stand and cast their nets, it is a waste of barrenness. You have never been on the shores of the Dead Sea, Arthur; you do not know how a little thread of green on the mountain side shews where a spring of sweet water runs down through the waste.'
'What then, Mr. Rollo?' said Wych Hazel.
'It is such a tiny thread of life upon the universal brown death.'