SET OF MOON
On a night at mid-December, in a darkened room, Daniel Brendon sat
writing laboriously. The candle beside him was shielded so that the
light should fall only on his papers, on a copy of the "War Cry," and
on his Bible. In a corner were two beds, side by side, and his boy
occupied the smaller one and slept peacefully there. Upon a chair by
the little bed Gregory's clean clothes were placed for the morrow. A
small scarlet jersey hung close by, and beside it a very large one,
that Daniel would wear.
Brendon had joined the Salvation Army and was captain of the Lydford
Branch. Indeed, he had founded this branch, and worked like a giant
by night and day to increase its strength. Twenty-five persons were
already numbered.
He rose up and stretched his arms; then sat down and read through the
notes that he had made. To-morrow the man would preach from the
twelfth chapter of Job and the twenty-second verse.
"He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to
light the shadow of death."
The child laughed in his sleep and then was still again. A clock
struck four.
Brendon appeared to be much aged; he did not spare himself in his
unceasing struggles for his God. Only at such moments as this, in
the waste of night, when life's pulses burned low; when his own agony
surged high; when human powerlessness to stem the tide of the world's
grief was most borne in upon his spirit, did he waver and look
forward hungrily to the end. For a moment now he put his great hands
over his face and longed for the time when the dust of the workshop
should be still, the dust of the workman at rest.
John Prout and his sister received all Woodrow's money--a sum
sufficient for their needs until life's end. Brendon had sold
Ruddyford; and the payment, in shape of notes, he burnt. Now he
fought under the banner of the new sect that already foreshadowed its
coming power.
He rose presently, gazed upon the night and started at what he saw.
"Blood and Fire in heaven too!" he thought.
Behind the mass of Lydford castle a moon, just short of fall, was
sinking amid vast clouds. Some were very dark and some were
luminous; some, while circled with flame, yet moved in masses
unutterably black. The firmament seemed troubled by this
conflagration. The setting moon, surrendering her silver, took upon
her bosom the tinctures of earth; and the stormy clouds burnt with
her stained radiance. Above them the light exhaled and shot upward
into heaven, where stars shone through the vaporous floor of the sky.
Orion wheeled his far-flung glories westward and followed the red
moon.
The wonder of this silent and nocturnal pageant endured awhile; then
it slowly died away. The planet flashed a farewell ruby above the
edge of the world, and dreamless darkness brooded upon earth for a
little space before the dawn.
THE END
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.