A quiver shuddered through the congregation; they remembered the old witch-wife—was burning too bitter a penance for such deeds? Silently, but with terrible unanimity, Vashti Lansing was condemned, but their gaze did not wander for a second from the magnetic eyes of their preacher who, with a few more words of eulogy upon Vashti, which were tragically but unconsciously ironic, continued in an almost apologetic way, “I would be the last to question the inspiration of my last Sunday’s sermon to you, but yet,” more humbly still, as one who, whilst excusing himself, still persists in error, “but yet I can’t help thinking we should not dwell too much upon the inclement side of justice; why grieve over sudden deaths when we have read of those who ‘were not, for God took them?’ Why scorn death-bed repentances when we remember the thief on the cross? Why scoff and turn away from those who sin; why predict generations of shame for them when it is written, ‘Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.’” The imagery of the words he had quoted diverted his thoughts to another channel, the apology died from his voice, to be succeeded by the triumph of the high priest who chants a pæan to his divinity, and he uttered an impassioned plea to the men and women before him to endeavour to bring their lives more into accord with the beauty and sublimity of nature, and just as he was soaring into the rhapsodies of pantheistic adoration, there sounded from the elm trees the clear sweet call of a bird.
Sidney paused and listened. It came again.
And then before the wondering eyes of the startled congregation—Sidney’s face was transfigured into a semblance of glorified peace. He stood before them smiling in visible beatitude. The sun ray which had been wavering nearer and nearer to him descended upon his brow like an aureola, Nature’s golden crown to the soul which adored her; an instant the congregation saw their preacher thus—for the third time the bird’s imperatively sweet cry sounded, and Sidney, turning as one who responds to a personal summons, descended the pulpit stair, and following the bird’s voice out into the sunshine of the summer day, and was gladly gathered to its bosom. Henceforth he had no part in human hopes or fears. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” a heaven of infinite freshness, of illimitable joy, of inexhaustible possibilities and gladness.