Was it true, what Sophia had said, that he had sold his birthright for a little paltry prosperity?
He thought more highly of her discrimination than any one else would have done, because he loved her.

What had she seen in him to make her use that form of accusation?
And if it was true, was there for him no place of repentance?
Then he remembered the purer air of the dark mountaintop.

There he had seen many from his own little cure of souls who were shaken by the madman's fervour as _he_ had never been able to move them by precept or example.

There he, too, had seen, with sight borrowed from the eyes of the enthusiast, the enthusiast's Lord, seen Him the more readily because there had been times in his life when he had not needed another to show him the loveliness that exceeds all other loveliness.

He was versed in the chronicle of the days when the power of God wrought wonders by devoted men, and he asked himself with whom this power had been working here of late--with him, the priest, or with this wandering fool, out of whose lips it would seem that praise was ordained.