Before I left the bridge,--while, in fact, I was contemplating the
pollards with an eye, if not of favour, yet of diminished
dismay,--the sun, which, for anything I knew of his whereabouts,
either from knowledge of the country, aspect of the evening, or
state of my own feelings, might have been down for an hour or two,
burst his cloudy bands, and blazed out as if he had just risen from
the dead, instead of being just about to sink into the grave. Do not
tell me that my figure is untrue, for that the sun never sinks into
the grave, else I will retort that it is just as true of the sun as
of a man; for that no man sinks into the grave. He only disappears.
Life IS a constant sunrise, which death cannot interrupt, any more
than the night can swallow up the sun. "God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living; for all live unto him."

Well, the sun shone out gloriously. The whole sweep of the gloomy
river answered him in gladness; the wet leaves of the pollards
quivered and glanced; the meadows offered up their perfect green,
fresh and clear out of the trouble of the rain; and away in the
distance, upon a rising ground covered with trees, glittered a
weathercock. What if I found afterwards that it was only on the roof
of a stable? It shone, and that was enough. And when the sun had
gone below the horizon, and the fields and the river were dusky once
more, there it glittered still over the darkening earth, a symbol of
that faith which is "the evidence of things not seen," and it made
my heart swell as at a chant from the prophet Isaiah. What matter
then whether it hung over a stable-roof or a church-tower?

I stood up and wandered a little farther--off the bridge, and along
the road. I had not gone far before I passed a house, out of which