Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture.  They were remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst.  There was something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy, seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.

“Sirs,” he said, “do you desire the coming of the Lord?”

He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a village innocent, replied, “We hope we are giving our lives to advance His kingdom.”

“But the King,” said the old man.  “He is coming.  Do you cry to Him to come quickly?”

“We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time,” said Trenholme, still benignly.

“His own time is suddenly, in the night,” cried the old man, “when the Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building, selling, buying; and marrying—­that is His time.  We shall see Him.  We shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His voice when he tells us that He loves us.  We shall see Him when we pray; we shall hear Him give the answer.  Sirs, do you desire that He should come now, and reign over you?”

The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer.  The old man had always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that, strangely, they felt it incumbent upon them to answer.  One, a dull-looking man, answered “yes,” with conventional piety.  Another said sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first.  Then, when the first effect of the enthusiast’s influence was passing off, they began to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them.  A youth said rudely that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on to preach.

The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme.  “He will come to reign,” he cried, “to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him.  Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?”

Trenholme did not give answer as before.

“Poor fellow,” said the Presbyterian, pityingly.

The shower was passing over, and they moved away.

The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in all the beauty of its wet verdure.  He looked round upon them all, and there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.

“I have a message to you,” he said.  “Before another Lord’s, day comes, He will come.”

The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.

“He is mad; they all know that he is mad,” urged Trenholme, dissuading him.

They looked back, and saw the old man still preaching to the labourers under the tree.  A mare with its foal, and two half-grown colts, had come up to an open fence within the tree’s shadow, and, with their long gentle heads hanging over, they too seemed to be listening.