At the top of Badger's Street he paused. The street was still; the sky was
pale green on the horizon, purple overhead. The light was still strong,
but, to the left beyond the sloping fields, the woods were banked black
and sombre. From the meadow in front of the woods came the sounds of an
encampment--women shouting, horses neighing, dogs barking. A few lights
gleamed like red eyes. The dusky forms of caravans with their thick-set
chimneys, ebony-coloured against the green sky, crouched like animals
barking. A woman was singing, men's voices took her up, and the song came
rippling across the little valley.
All the stir of an invading world was there.
Chapter II
Friday, June 18: Shadow Meets Shadow
On that Friday evening, about half-past six o'clock, Archdeacon Brandon,
just as he reached the top of the High Street, saw God.
There was nothing either strange or unusual about this. Having had all his
life the conviction that he and God were on the most intimate of terms,
that God knew and understood himself and his wants better than any other
friend that he had, that just as God had definitely deputed him to work
out certain plans on this earth, so, at times, He needed his own help and
advice, having never wavered for an instant in the very simplest tenets of
his creed, and believing in every word of the New Testament as though the
events there recorded had only a week ago happened in his own town under
his own eyes--all this being so, it was not strange that he should
sometimes come into close and actual contact with his Master.
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