first,--heats up and flies off,--it don't take long
to find that; and common oxygen gets at common lead, and so on; but,
dear Miss Craydocke, do you know what comforts me? That you _must_ have
the quicksilver to discover the gold!"

Miss Craydocke winked. She had to do it then, and the two little round
drops fell. They went down, unseen, into the short pasture-grass, and I
wonder what little wild-flowers grew of their watering some day
afterward.

It was getting a little too quiet between them now for people on a
picnic, perhaps; and so in a minute Sin Saxon said again: "It's good to
know there is a way to sort everything out. Perhaps the tares and wheat
mean the same thing. Mr. Wharne, why is it that things seem more sure
and true as soon as we find out we can make an allegory to them?"

"Because we do _not_ make the allegory. It is there, as you have said.
'I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things which have been
kept secret from the foundation of the world.' These things are that
speech of God that was in the beginning. The Word made flesh,--it is He
that interpreteth."

That was too great to give small answer to. Nobody spoke again till Sin
Saxon had to jump up to attend to her coffee, that was boiling over, and
then they took up their little cares of the feast, and their chat over
it.

Cakes and coffee, fruits and cream,--I do not care to linger over these.
I would rather take you to the cool, shadowy, solemn Minster cavern, the
deep, wondrous recess in the face of solid rock, whose foundation and
whose roof are a mountain; or above, upon the beetling crag that makes
but its porch-lintel, and looks forth itself across great air-spaces
toward its kindred cliffs, lesser and more mighty, all around, making
one listen in one's heart for the awful voices wherewith they call to
each other forevermore.

The party had scattered again, after the repast, and Leslie and the
Josselyns had gone back into the Minster entrance, where they never
tired of standing, and out of whose gloom they looked now upon all the
flood of splendor, rosy, purple, and gold, which the royal sun flung
back--his last and richest largess--upon the heights that looked longest
after him. Mr. Wharne and Miss Craydocke climbed the cliff. Sin Saxon,
on her way up, stopped short among the broken crags below. There was
something very earnest in her gaze, as she lifted her eyes, wide and
beautiful with the wonder in them, to the face of gr