culmination, but long before the different seekers had found the meeting
place, which was only known to the loyal-hearted, the storm, having
spent itself elsewhere, had passed away.

There was an open space upon a high slope of the hill. Trees stood above
it, below, around--high, black masses of trees. It was here old
Cameron's company had gathered together. No woodland spot, in dark, damp
night, ever looked more wholly natural and of earth than this. Sophia
Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of
this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they
might look and listen. They saw the small crowd assembled some way off,
but could not recognise the figures or count them. Listening intently,
they heard the swaying of a myriad leaves, the drip of their moisture,
the trickle of rivulets that the rain had started again in troughs of
summer drought, and, amidst all these, the old man's voice in accents of
prayer.

Even in her feverish eagerness to seek Winifred, which had sustained her
so long, Sophia chose now to skirt the edge of the wood rather than
cross the open. As they went through long grass and bracken, here and
there a fallen log impeded their steps. A frog, disturbed, leaped before
them in the grass; they knew what it was by the sound of its falls.
Soon, in spite of the rustle of their walking, they began to hear the
old man's words.

It seemed that he was repeating such passages of Scripture as ascribe
the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in
a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the
poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much
lighter now than when the storm hung over. They saw Cameron standing on