I shall read, read, read," he muttered slowly. Then came over him
suddenly what he called "The presence of God"; a sense of a good, strong
something folding him round. He smiled through his half-shut eyes. "Ah,
Father, my own Father, it is so sweet to feel you, like the warm sunshine.
The Bibles and books cannot tell of you and all I feel you. They are mixed
with men's words; but you--"
His muttering sank into inaudible confusion, till, opening his eyes wide,
it struck him that the brown plain he looked at was the old home farm. For
half an hour they had been riding in it, and he had not known it. He
roused the leader, who sat nodding on the front of the wagon in the early
morning sunlight. They were within half a mile of the homestead. It
seemed to him that he had been gone from them all a year. He fancied he
could see Lyndall standing on the brick wall to watch for him; his father,
passing from one house to the other, stopping to look.
He called aloud to the oxen. For each one at home he had brought
something. For his father a piece of tobacco, bought at the shop by the
mill; for Em a thimble; for Lyndall a beautiful flower dug out by the
roots, at a place where they had outspanned; for Tant Sannie a
handkerchief. When they drew near the house he threw the whip to the
Kaffer leader, and sprung from the side of the wagon to run on.
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