are, but
come into my place and get warmed and fed."

"How do you know He is here?" asked the old man, shaking his head
slowly.

"Everybody knows that."

"I can't hear."

"Everybody knows," shouted Trenholme.

"How do you know? What do you know?" asked the other, shaking his head
sorrowfully.

Trenholme would have given much to comfort him. He tried to drag him by
main force in the direction of the house. The old man yielded himself a
few steps, then drew back, asking,

"Why do you say He is here?"

"Because" (Trenholme called out his words in the same high key) "before
He died, and after, He said He would always be with His servants. Don't
you believe what He said?"

Again the old man yielded a few paces, evidently listening and hearing
with difficulty, perhaps indeed only hearing one or two words that
attracted him.

"Did the Lord say it to _you_?" he asked eagerly.

"No."

There was blank disappointment shown instantly. They had come to a
standstill again.

"Do you know him?" The strong old face was peering eagerly into his, as
if it had not been dark. "Have you heard his voice?"

"I don't know," answered Trenholme, half angrily.

Without another word the old man shook him off, and turned once more to
the starry sky above.

"Lord Jesus!" he prayed, "this man has never heard thy voice. They who
have heard Thee know thy voice--they know, O Lord, they know." He
retraced all the steps he had taken with Trenholme and continued in
prayer.

After that, although Trenholme besought and commanded, and tried to draw
him both by gentleness and force, he obtained no further notice. It was
not that he was repulsed, but that he met with absolute neglect. The old
man was rock-like in his physical strength.

Trenholme looked round about, but there was certainly no help to be
obtained. On the one side he saw the birch wood indistinctly; the white
trunks half vanished from sight against the white ground, but the brush
of upper branches hung like the mirage of a forest between heaven and
earth. All round was the wild region of snow. From his own small house
the lamp which he had left on the table shot out a long bright ray
through a chink in the frostwork on the window. It occurred to him that
when he had fetched down the lamp it was probably this ray, sudden and
unexpected in such a place, that had attracted his strange visitor to
his house. Had his poor dazed brain accepted it as some sign of the
glorious a