immediately they turned to him again.

Sandy knew the pictures in the "Pilgrim's Progress," and Andrew had read
it through more than once: when they saw the man had a book in his hand,
open, and heard him, standing there in the sun, begin to read from it,
they thought it must be Christian, waiting for Evangelist to come to
him. It is impossible to say how much is fact and how much imagination
in what children recollect; the one must almost always supplement the
other; but they were quite sure that the words he read were these: "And
lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world!" The next thing
they remembered was their walking slowly down the hill in the red light,
and all at once waking up to the fact that the man was gone, they did
not know when or where. But their arms were round each other's necks,
and they were full of a strange awe. Then Andrew saw something red on
Sandy's face.

"Eh, Sandy!" he cried, "it's bluid!" and burst into tears.

It was his own blood, not Sandy's!--the discovery of which fact relieved
Andrew, and did not so greatly discompose Sandy, who was less sensitive.

They began at length to speculate on what had happened. One thing was
clear: it was because they were fighting that the man had come; but it
was not so clear who the man was. He could not be Christian, because
Christian went over the river! Andrew suggested it might have been
Evangelist, for he seemed to be always about. Sandy added, as his
contribution to the idea, that he might have picked up Christian's
bundle and been carrying it home to his wife. They came, however, to the
conclusion, by no ratiocination, I think, but by a conviction which the
idea itself brought with it, that the stranger was the Lord himself, and