Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/152

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
136
Where Highways Cross

interest which she showed. Upon several occasions when he had an engagement to preach in some neighbouring village chapel she accompanied him to and fro. His sermons were now of a tone that harmonised with the newer colour of his life. He was full of love and compassion towards humanity; the warmth of his own heart seemed to flow out to all the world. Elisabeth marvelled as she heard him; it seemed to her that on these occasions he was carried to great heights, and spoke like the old prophets upon whose mysticism he largely fed his soul. She began to look forward to Sunday evening as the white-letter day of the week, for then there was always' the whole afternoon in Hepworth's company, and the walk to some distant village later on, and later still, in the twilight hush, while the red afterglow faded in the western sky, and the last dreamy songs of the birds sounded from every coppice and hedgerow, the walk home again, and the confidential talk that seemed to bind her closer