CHAPTER XIX
The next morning, Saunders having left home on some business pertaining to the building of his new cotton-factory, Mostyn started out on one of his all-day rambles in the mountains. As he was passing the store Wartrace called out to him cordially.
"You ought to come around about one o'clock, Mr. Mostyn," he said. "A big crowd will be here to listen to John Leach, the tramp preacher. He's billed for my store, an' he never fails to be on time."
Mostyn passed on after exchanging a few labored platitudes with the storekeeper. He shrank from the thought of meeting a crowd even of simple mountain people. The high open spaces above silently beckoned to him. Never before had solitude in the breast of Nature had such appeal for him. He found growing interest in plants, flowers, insects, and birds. He wondered if they, too, suffered from grief and pain. At noon, when the day was warmest, he reclined on the mossy bank of a clear brook. He took off his shoes and bathed his feet in the cool, swift-running water, feeling the chill course through his veins. What was it that kept whispering within him that here and here alone was the balm for such wounds as his? Contrasting the mystic quiet of his surroundings with the snarling jangle of the life he had led in town, a faint hope of eventual peace began to spring up within him. Once he raised his hands to the infinite blue above him, and his thought, if not his words, was all but a prayer for mercy.
He was descending the mountain road near sunset. The valley into which he was going was already in shadow. Suddenly he heard a mellow masculine voice singing a hymn, and, turning a bend in the road, his body bent downward and swinging his hat in his hand, was Leach, the preacher.
"Well, well, well!" Leach exclaimed, gladly, when he was near enough to recognize him. "I heard you were in these diggings, and was sorry not to see you out at my meeting."
Leach took his hand, pressing his fingers in a tense and sincere clasp while he looked into his eyes tenderly. His strong face filled with emotion; his big lower lip actually shook.
"You needn't tell me about it, brother," he said, huskily. "I've heard it all, and I never was so sorry for a man in my life. You have been sorely stricken—you've had as much as you can stand up under and live. As soon as I heard it I said to myself: 'Here is a man that has to suffer as much as I went through.' Brother"—Leach still hung on to his hand—"you can't see it as I do now, and you will think I am crazy for saying it, I reckon, but if things work out right, you will see the time that you will thank God for giving you the load that's on you. Everything that happens under the Lord's sun is according to law, and is right—so right that average human beings can't see it. You've heard me tell about what I went through in prison, and I thank God for every minute of it. The backbone of my pride had to be broken, and it took that to do it. Are you in a big hurry?"
"No," Mostyn faltered. "I have plenty of time."
"Well, if you don't mind, let's sit here on the rocks," Leach suggested. "I want to see the sun set. I never miss a sunset on a mountain if I can help it. That's why I walked up here. A fellow asked me to spend the night with him on his farm in the valley, but I refused. The longer I live the more I want to get away from houses, tables, beds, and chairs. They are just babies' rag dolls and playing-blocks. I'll rake up a pile of pine-needles at the highest point I can reach on this mountain to-night and lie with my eyes on the stars-pin-hole windows to God's glory. Sometimes I can't sleep—I get so full of worship. I was reading the other day that it would take a fast train forty million years to get to the nearest fixed star. Isn't that awful? And think of it, when you got there, a billion times more would lie beyond—so much more that you wouldn't even then have touched the fringe of the wonderful scheme. It is too big for the mind of man to grasp, and so is the other, the realm of spirit, which is, after all, the main thing—in fact, the only thing."