and the wind became to her a live gloom, in which, with no eye-bound to the
space enclosing her, she could go on imagining after the freedom of her own
wild will. As the world and everything in it gradually disappeared, it grew
easy to imagine Jesus making the darkness light about him, and stepping
from it plain before her sight. That could be no trouble to him, she
argued, as, being everywhere, he must be there. He could appear in any
form, who had created every shape on the face of the whole world! If she
were but fit to see him, then surely he would come to her! For thus often
had her father spoken to her, talking of the varied appearances of the Lord
after his resurrection, and his promise that he would be with his disciples
always to the end of the world. Even after he had gone back to his father,
had he not appeared to the apostle Paul? and might it not be that he had
shown himself to many another through the long ages? In any case he was
everywhere, and always about them, although now, perhaps from lack of faith
in the earth, he had not been seen for a long time. And she remembered her
father once saying that nobody could even _think_ a thing if there was no
possible truth in it. The Lord went away that they might believe in him
when out of the sight of him, and so be in him, and he in them!

"I dinna think," said Maggie aloud to herself, as she trudged along beside
the delightfully silent Andrew, "that my father would be the least
astonished--only filled wi' an awfu' glaidness--if at ony moment, walkin at
his side, the Lord was to call him by his name, and appear til him. He
would but think he had just steppit oot upon him frae some secret door, and
would say,--'I thoucht, Lord, I would see you some day! I was aye greedy
efter a sicht o' ye, Lord, and here ye are!'"