our spring differ
from that of a thousand others on these hills?"

"The younger sahib," answered the hermit, "understands not the
meaning of a vow; which a man makes to his own hurt, perhaps, or to
the hurt of another, or it may even be quite foolishly; but thereby
he stablishes his life, while the days of other men go by in a flux
of business. As for the water of my hillside," he went on with a
sharp change of voice and speaking, to their amazement, in English,
"have not your countrymen, O sahibs, their particular springs?
Churchman and Dissenter, Presbyterian and Baptist--count they not
every Jordan above Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus?"

He turned and walked swiftly from them, mounting the slope with swift
loose strides. But while they stared, Bhagwan Dass broke from them
and ran in pursuit.

"Not without thy blessing! O Annesley sahib, go not before thou hast
blessed me!"

Two days later, at sunset, a child watching a little below the
hermit's spring saw him limp back to it and drink and seat himself
again at the entrance of the cave; and pelted down to the village
with the news. And the hill-people, who had supposed him gone for
ever, swarmed up and about the cave to assure themselves.

"Alas!" said the holy man, gazing out upon the twilight when at
length all had departed, leaving him in peace. "Cannot a man be
anywhere alone with God? And yet," he added, "I was something
wistful for their love."

CHAPTER I.

"_To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have
rebelled against him: neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord
our God, to walk in his laws which he set before us. O Lord, correct
me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to
nothing_."

The voice travelled down the great nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and, as
it came, the few morning worshippers--it was a week-day--inclined
their faces upwards: for it seemed to pause and float overhead and
again be carried forward by its own impulse, a pure column of sound
wavering awhile before it broke and spread and dissolved into
whispers among the multitudinous arches. To a woman still kneeling
by a pillar close within the western doorway it was as the voice of a
seraph speaking with the dawn, fresh from his night-watch over earth.
She had been kneeling for minutes, and still knelt, but she could not
pray. She had no business to be there. To her the sentences carried
no message; but the voice smi