He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where their life is joined to his or else is dead.  Of how, when we feel it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his peace upon us; because He suffers till we are at peace.  That so his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering, and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in one, that if we receive the one,—­if we bear the pain with which He touches us,—­we shall also receive the other.

“Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of your wrong-doing.  We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done nothing amiss, suffers at our side.  ’If we are planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection;’ our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed.  ’We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on her lap.  Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her.  Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there.  Men and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast, wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew.

They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy.  There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen with the heavenliest things that are seen.

Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling of this little greenhouse.  He meant that there should be a summer pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first.

After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes already established, and the buildings that were making ready for more.

Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to accomplish.  He pointed out here and there what might be done.  Over there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the spring.  There was a quarry in yonder hill.  Down here, through that left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad.

“A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two hundred acres,” he said.