One, stripped of
all but two lateral branches, brought a boyish recollection to his
fevered brain. Against a background of dull sunset fire, it
extended two gaunt arms--black, rigid, and pathetic. Calvary!
With the very word upon his lips, he threw himself, face downwards,
on the ground beneath it, and, with his fingers clutched in the
soil, lay there for some moments, silent and still. In this
attitude, albeit a skeptic and unorthodox man, he prayed. I cannot
say--indeed I DARE not say--that his prayer was heard, or that God
visited him thus. Let us rather hope that all there was of God in
him, in this crucial moment of agony and shame, strove outward and
upward. Howbeit, when the moon rose he rose too, perhaps a trifle
less steady than the planet, and began to descend the hill with
feverish haste, yet with this marked difference between his present
haste and his former recklessness, that it seemed to have a well-
defined purpose. When he reached the road again, he struck into a
well-worn trail, where, in the distance, a light faintly twinkled.
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