Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BOB
Conticucre oinncs ?Virgil NEXT Saturday afternoon Mr. Mann went out for his usual short walk. He turned, as was his wont, to the northwest, up the green slope at the foot of which stood Kirk and Manse, across the dark strip of heather, along below the corn of Hooll, up the steep footpath between the
rigs, and so on to the top of the hill behind old Magnus Sharp’s house. As he walked, he repeated half aloud to himself bits of his sermon for the morrow. The theme was
Praise again. He could not get beyond it. There was a fine view from the top of the hill; but when he reached the top he was so taken up with his own thoughts that for a time he gave no heed to it. He stopped, however, and turned his eyes absently to the north-east and the entrance of the voe. He had chosen for his text the first clause in the first verse of the sixty-fifth Psalm. The fact of his physical position slowly forced itself upon his notice, but it was mingled with his spiritual reflections. Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion, he repeated aloud. He had ended his sermon by stating that the praise God wanted most was that of Man, that of the sole free agent to be found in all His universe. He felt that this still waited potentially in the world leavened by the Church, and he made that thought the basis of his earnest closing appeal. He felt that spiritually as well as physically he stood at that moment upon a hilltop, calling to his people to come up to the holy height and bask there in the glory. Then he remembered that last Sunday he had noticed two old men asleep. Three or four times the thought of it had pained him. There was, too, that little, unsatisfactory incident with Inga. That had been in his mind several times, but only vaguely. The two old men who had slept b…