In defiance of this laugh the Chellaston man made further explanation.  He said the religious folks said it was clearly written in the Book of Daniel (he pronounced it Dannel); if you made the days it talks of years, and the weeks seven years, the end must come about this time.  At first folks had calculated it would be 1843, but since then they had found they were thirty years out somehow.

“That would make it this year,” agreed the first man.  Some others that had gathered round laughed in chorus.  They vented some bad language to; but the Chellaston man, excited with his tale, went on.

“All the Advent folks believe that.  They believe all the good folks will be caught up in the air; and after that they’re to come back, and the world will be just like the Garden of Eden for a thousand years.”

He was casting pearls before swine, for some of his hearers chanted gibes.  “Is that so?” they sang, to the notes of a response in Church music.

Night had closed in black about them.  All on the platform had come together in close group.  The wind-blown light of the station lamp was on their faces.  In the distance the smouldering storm rumbled and flashed.

“All religious folks believe that,” continued the speaker, a little scornfully, “and the Advents think it’ll be now; but old Cameron we’ve had in Chellaston for a year, he tells them it’ll be to-night.”

Alec Trenholme had by this time received his brother’s letters.  “A year!” interrupted he almost fiercely.  “Didn’t he come in January?”

The narrator drew in the horns of his exaggeration.  “D’ye know all about him, for there’s no use telling if you do?”

“I only thought you might be talking about an old man heard went there then.”

“He a’most died, or did really, somewhere below Quebec; and then he got up and preached and prayed, and his folks wouldn’t keep him, so he wandered everywhere, and a kind young man we have at our place took him in and keeps him.  When he was in the other world he heard the Judgment would happen to-night.  Would that be the same man you know?”

“It will be the same man.”

“Did you know his people?” asked the other curiously.

But Alec had no thought of being questioned.  He brought the speaker back to his place as historian, and he, nothing loth, told of the intended meeting on the mountain, and of the white ascension robes, in his ignorant, blatant fashion, laying bare the whole pathetic absurdity of it.

Two ribald listeners, who had evidently been in some choir, paced arm in arm, singing the responses to the Litany in melodramatic fashion, except when their voices were choked with loud laughter at their own wit.

Pushed by the disagreeableness of these surroundings, and by keen interest in the old man who had once visited him, Alec decided on the walk.  The mountain was nearer than the village; he hoped to reach it in time.  He was told to keep on the same road till he came to the river, to follow its bank for about a mile, and when he saw the buildings of a farm just under the hill, to turn up a lane which would lead him by the house to the principal ascent.  He walked out into the night.