What think you now, sir?” Hartwell asked of Wesley when the latter had descended the stairs and entered the little parlour of the house.

“I am too greatly amazed to think,” replied Wesley. “But since you put thinking into my head, I would ask you if you think it unnatural that a great ebb should follow an unusually high tide?”

It was plain that Hartwell was greatly perturbed.

“Unnatural? Why, has not everything that has happened for the past three days been unnatural?” he cried. “Sir, I am, I thank God, a level-headed man. I have seen some strange things in my life, both in the mines and when seafaring; I thought that naught could happen to startle me, but I confess that this last—I tell you, sir, that I feel now as if I were in the midst of a dream. My voice sounds strange to myself; it seems to come from someone apart from me—nay, rather from myself, but outside myself.”

“'Tis the effect of the heat, dear friend,” said Wesley. “You should have slept as I did.”

“I did sleep, sir; what I have been asking myself is 'Am I yet awake?' I have had dreams before like to this one—dreams of watching the sea and other established things that convey to us all ideas of permanence and regularity, melting away before my very eyes—one dread vision showed me Greta Cliff crumbling away like a child's mound built on the sand—crumbling away into the sea, and then the sea began to ebb and soon was on the horizon. Now, I have been asking myself if I am in the midst of that same dream again. Can it be possible? Can it be possible?”

He clapped his hand to his forehead and hastened to the window, whence he looked out. Almost immediately he returned to Wesley, saying:

“I pray you to inform me, sir, if this is the truth or a dream—is it really the case that the sea has ebbed so that there is naught left of it?”

“You are awake, my brother,” said Wesley, “and 'tis true that the sea hath ebbed strangely; but from the upper windows 'tis possible to see a broad band of it in the distance. I beseech of you to lie down on your bed and compose yourself. This day has tried you greatly.”

The other stared at him for a few moments and then walked slowly away, muttering:

“A mystery—a mystery! Oh, the notion of Dick Pritchard being a true prophet! Was it of such stuff as this the old prophets were made? God forgive me if I erred in thinking him one of the vain fellows. Mr. Wesley's judgment was not at fault; he came hither to preach against him; but not a word did he utter of upbraiding or reproof.”

Wesley saw that the man was quite overcome. Up to this moment he had shown himself to be possessed of a rational mind, and one that was not easily put off its balance. He had only a few hours before been discussing Pritchard in a sober and unemotional spirit; but this last mystery had been too much for him: the disappearance of the sea, which had lately climbed up to the doors of Porthawn, had unhinged him and thrown him off his balance. If the phenomenon had occurred at any other time—under any less trying conditions of weather—he might have been able to observe it with equanimity; but the day had been, as Wesley said, a trying one. The intense heat was of itself prostrating, and demoralising even to Wesley himself, and he had schooled himself to be unaffected by any conditions of weather.

Suddenly Hartwell turned toward his visitor, saying:

“And if the man was entrusted to predict the falling away of the sea, is there anyone that will say that the remainder of his prophecy will not be fulfilled?”

“I entreat of you, brother, to forbear asking yourself any further questions until you have had a few hours' sleep,” said Wesley.

“What signifies a sleep now if before this time to-morrow the end of all things shall have come?” Hartwell cried almost fiercely. “Nay, sir, I shall wait with the confidence of a Christian; I shall not be found as were the foolish virgins—asleep and with unlighted lamps. There will be no slumber for me. I shall watch and pray.”

“Let us pray together, my brother,” said Wesley, laying his hand on the man's shoulder affectionately. He perceived that he was not in a mood to be reasoned with.

It was at this moment that the door was opened and there entered the room the miller and Jake 'Pullsford.

Wesley welcomed their coming; he had hopes that they would succeed in persuading his host to retire; but before they had been in the room for more than a few minutes Hartwell had well-nigh become himself again.

The newcomers were not greatly affected by anything that had happened. They were only regretful that the mist of the morning had prevented them from reaching the Red Tor in time for the preaching. They had started together, but had stopped upon the way to help a party of their friends who were in search of still another party, and when the strayed ones had been found they all had thought it prudent to remain at a farm where they had dined.

“On our way hither we met with one who had been to the preaching,” said Jake. “He told us something of what we had missed.”

“Were you disappointed to learn that no reference had been made to the very matter that brought me back to you?” asked Wesley.

Jake did not answer immediately. It was apparent that he had his own views on this matter, and that he had been expounding them to his companion on their walk from the farm to the coast.

“Mr. Wesley, 'tis plain to me that the skill at divination shown by that man comes from below, not from above,” he said. “And do you suppose that our enemies will take back any of the foul things they have said about our allying ourselves with sorcery when they hear of the wonderful things that are now happening?”

“Brother,” said Wesley, “if the principles of the Truth which we have been teaching are indeed true, they will survive such calumnies—nay, they will take the firmer hold upon all who have heard us by reason of such calumnies. The gold of the Truth has oft been tried by the fire of calumny and proved itself to be precious.”

“You saw the man play-acting in his sackcloth?” said the carrier.

Wesley shook his head sadly.

“'Twas deplorable!” he said. “And yet I dare not even now speak against him—no, not a word.”

“What, sir, you do not believe that he is a sorcerer and a soothsayer?” cried Jake.

“I have not satisfied myself that he is either,” replied Wesley. “More than once since I saw how much evil was following on his predictions I have felt sure that he was an agent of our Arch-enemy, but later I have not felt quite so confident in my judgment. No, friend, I shall not judge him. He is in the hands of God.”

“And I agree with Mr. Wesley,” said the miller.

Jake Pullsford, with his hands clasped behind him and his head craned forward, was about to speak, when Hal Holmes entered the room. He was excited.

“Have you seen it?” he cried before he had greeted anyone. “Have you seen it—the vision of his trance at the Mill—the tide sliding away as it hath never done before within the memory of man?—the discovery of the bare hollow basin of the sea? Have you been within sight of the Dog's Teeth?”

“We—Mr. Hartwell and I—have not been out of doors for six hours; but we are going now,” said Wesley. “We have seen some of the wonders that have happened; we would fain witness all.”

“Oh, sir,” said the blacksmith, “this one is the first that I have seen, and seeing it has made me think that we were too hasty in condemning poor Dick Pritchard. We need your guidance, sir. Do you hold that a man may have the gift of prophecy in this Dispensation, without being a sorcerer, and the agent of the Fiend?”

“Alas! 'tis not I that can be your guide in such a matter,” said Wesley. “You must join with me in seeking for guidance from above. Let us go forth and see what is this new wonder.”

“'Tis the vision of his trance—I saw it with these eyes as I passed along the high ground above the Dog's Teeth Reef—the reef was well-nigh bare and naked,” said Hal. “Who is there of us that could tell what the bottom of the sea looked like? We knew what the simple slopes of the beach were—the spaces where the tide was wont to ebb and flow over are known to all; but who before since the world began saw those secret hidden deeps where the lobsters lurk and crabs half the size of a man's body—I saw them with these eyes a while agone—and the little runnels—a thousand of them, I believe, racing through channels in the slime as if they were afraid to be left behind when the sea was ebbing out of sight—and the sun turned all into the colour of blood! What does it all mean, Mr. Wesley—I do not mean the man's trance-dream, but the thing itself that hath come to pass?”

“We shall go forth and be witnesses of all,” said Wesley.

He was not excited; but this could not be said of his companions; they betrayed their emotions in various ways. Mr. Hartwell and the miller were silent and apparently stolid; but the carrier and the smith talked.

Very few minutes sufficed to bring them to the summit of the cliff that commanded a full view seaward. At high tide the waves just reached the base of these cliffs, and the furthest ebb only left bare about a hundred feet of sand and shingle, with large smooth pebbles in ridges beyond the groins of the out-jutting rocks. But now it was a very different picture from that of the ordinary ebb that stretched away to the horizon under the eyes of our watchers.

The sandy breadth, with its many little ribs made by the waves, sloped into a line of sparse sea weed, tangled tufts of green and brown, and some long and wiry, and others flat with large and leathery bosses, like the studs of a shield. But beyond this space the rocks of the sea-bed began to show, There they were in serrated rows—rocks that had never before been seen by human eyes. Some lay in long sharp ridges, with here and there a peak of a miniature mountain, and beyond these lines of ridges there was a broad tableland, elevated in places and containing huge hollow basins brimming over with water, out of which every now and again a huge fish leaped, only to find itself struggling among the thick weeds. Further away still there was a great breadth of ooze, and then peak beyond peak of rocks, to which huge, grotesque weeds were clinging, having the semblance of snakes coiled round one another and dying in that close embrace.

Looking over these strange spaces was like having a bird's-eye view of an unexplored country of mountains and tablelands and valleys intersected by innumerable streams. The whole breadth of sea-bed was veined with little streams hurrying away after the lost sea, and all the air was filled with the prattling and chattering that went on through these channels.

And soon one became aware of a strange motion of struggling life among the forests of sea weed. At first it seemed no more than a quivering among the giant growths; but soon one saw the snake's head and the narrow shoulders of a big conger eel, from five to seven feet long, pushed through the jungle of ooze, to be followed by the wriggling body; there were congers by the hundred, and the hard-dying dog-fishes by the score, flapping and forcing their way from stream to stream. Stranded dying fish of all sorts made constant movements where they lay, and whole breadths of the sea-bed were alive with hurrying, scurrying crabs and lobsters and cray-fish. Some of these were of enormous size, patriarchs of the deep that had lurked for ages far out of reach of the fisherman's hook, and had mangled many a creel.

The weirdness of this unparalleled picture was immeasurably increased by its colouring, for over all there was spread what had the effect of a delicate crimson gauze. The whole of the sea-bed was crimson, for it was still dripping wet, and glistening with reflections of the red western sky. At the same time the great heat of the evening was sucking the moisture out of the spongy sea weeds, and there it remained in the form of a faint steam permeated with the crimson light.

And through all that broad space under the eyes of the watchers on the cliff there was no sign of a human being. They might have been the explorers of stout Cortez who stared at the Pacific from that peak in Darien. It was not until they had gone in silence for a quarter of a mile along the cliff path that they saw where the people of the village had assembled. The shore to the westward came into view and they saw that a crowd was there. The sound of the voices of the crowd came to their ears, and above it the hard, high monotone like that of a town crier uttering the words that Wesley had heard while yet in his room:

“There shall be no more sea. Repent—repent—repent.”

Once more they stood and looked down over the part of the coast that had just been disclosed—the eastern horn of Greta Bay, but no familiar landmark was to be seen; on the contrary, it seemed to them that they were looking down upon a new and curious region. The line of cliffs was familiar to their eyes, but what was that curious raised spine—that long sharp ridge stretching outwards for more than a mile on the glistening shore?

And what was that strange object—that huge bulk lying with one end tilted into the air on one shoulder of that sharp ridge?

All at once Wesley had a curious feeling that he had seen all that before. The sight of that mighty bulk and the knowledge that it was the heavy ribbed framework of a large ship seemed familiar. But when or how had he seen it?

It was not until Hartwell spoke that he understood how this impression had come to him.

“You see it—there—there—just as he described it to us when he awoke from his trance?” said Hartwell.

And there indeed it was—the fabric of the East Indiaman that had been wrecked years before on the Dog's Teeth Reef, and there was the Dog's Teeth Reef laid bare for the first time within the memory of man!

It was the skeleton of a great ship. The outer timbers had almost wholly disappeared—after every gale for years before some portion of the wreckage had come ashore and had been picked up by the villagers; but the enormous framework to which the timbers of the hull had been bolted had withstood the action of the waves, for the ship had sunk into a cradle of rock that held her firmly year after year. There it lay like the skeleton of some tremendous monster of the awful depths of the sea—the Kraken—a survival of the creatures that lived before the Flood. The three stumps of masts which stood up eight or ten feet above the line of bulwarks gave a curious suggestion to a creature's deformed legs, up in the air while it lay stranded on its curved back.

And the crimson sunset shot through the huge ribs of this thing and spread their distorted shadows sprawling over the sands at the base of the reef and upon the faces of the people who stood looking up at this wonder.

“There it is—just as he saw it in his trance!” said Hal Holmes. “He saw it and related it to us afterward. What are we to say to all this, Mr. Wesley? All that he predicted so far has come to pass. Are we safe in saying that yonder sun will be setting over a blazing world to-morrow?”

“I do not dare to say anything,” replied Wesley. “I have already offered my opinion to Mr. Hartwell, which is that there may be a kind of sympathy between the man and the earth, by whose aid he has been able to discover the whereabouts of a spring in the past and to predict these marvels of tides.”

“That is a diviner's skill derived from the demons that we know inhabit the inside of the earth,” cried Jake Pullsford. “He has ever had communication with these unclean things.”

“That works so far as the tides are concerned,” said the smith. “It stands to reason that the demons of the nether world must know all about the ebb and flow; but how did he foresee the laying bare of yonder secret?” He pointed to the body; of the wreck.

“Was it not the same demons that dragged the ship to destruction on the reef, and is't not within their province to know all that happens below the surface of the sea?” said the carrier.

“Doubtless,” said the smith. “But I find it hard to think of so moderately foolish a fellow as Dick Pritchard being hand in glove with a fiend of any sort, and not profiting more by the traffic—as to his secular circumstances, I should say.”

“And I find it hard to think of him as urging men to repent, if he be an ally of the Evil One,” said Hartwell.

“This is not a case in which the wisdom of man can show itself to be other than foolishness,” said Wesley. “But I am now moved to speak to the people who have come hither to see the wonder. Let us hasten onward to the highest ground. My heart is full.”

He went on with his friends to a short spur of the cliff about twenty feet above the shingle where groups of men and women were straying; most of them had been down to the wreck and nearly all were engaged in discussing its marvellous appearance. Some of the elder men were recalling for the benefit of the younger the circumstances of the loss of the great East Indiaman, and the affluence that had come to a good many houses in the Port, when the cargo began to be washed ashore before the arrival of the Preventive men and the soldiery from Falmouth.

But while the larger proportion of the people were engaged in discussing, without any sense of awe, the two abnormal tides and the story of the wreck, there were numbers who were clearly terror-stricken at the marvels and at the prospect of the morrow. A few women were clinging together and moaning without cessation, a girl or two wept aloud, a few shrieked hysterically, and one began to laugh and gibber, pointing monkey hands in the direction of the wreck. But further on half a dozen young men and maidens were engaged in a boisterous and an almost shocking game preserved in Cornwall and some parts of Wales through the ages that had elapsed since it was practised by a by-gone race of semi-savages. They went through it now in the most abandoned and barbaric way, dancing like Bacchanalians in a ring, with shouts and wild laughter.

John Wesley, who knew what it was to be human, had no difficulty in perceiving that these wretched people were endeavouring in such excesses to conceal the terror they felt, and he was not surprised to find a number of intoxicated men clinging together and singing wildly in the broad moorland space that lay on the landward side of the cliffs.

“This is the work of Pritchard the water-finder, and will you say that 'tis not of the Devil?” cried Jake Pullsford.

“Poor wretches! Oh, my poor brothers and sisters!” cried Wesley. “Our aim should be to soothe them, not to denounce them. Never have they been subjected to such a strain as that which has been put upon them. I can understand their excesses. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'—that is the cry which comes from all hearts that have not been regenerated.'Tis the cry of the old Paganism which once ruled the world, before the sweet calm of Christianity brought men from earth to heaven. I will speak to them.”

He had reached the high ground with his friends. There was a sudden spur on the range of low cliffs just where the people were most numerous. They had come from all quarters to witness the wonders of this lurid eve, and, as was the case at Wesley's preaching, everyone was asking of everyone else how so large an assembly could be brought together in a neighbourhood that was certainly not densely populated. On each side of him and on the beach below there were crowds, and on every face the crimson of the sinking sun flamed. He went out to the furthest point of the cliff-spur and stood there silent, with uplifted arms.

In a moment the whisper spread:

“Mr. Wesley has come—Mr. Wesley is preaching!”

There was the sound of many feet trampling down the pebbles of the beach. The people flowed toward him like a great wave slowly moving over that place now forsaken by the waves. The young men and maidens who had been engaged in that fierce wild dance among the wiry herbage flocked toward him, their faces shining from their exertions, and stood catching their breath. The old men who had been staring stolidly through the great ribs of the hulk, slouched through the ooze and stood sideways beneath him, their hands, like the gnarled joints of a thorn, scooped behind their ears lest they should lose a word. The women, with disordered hair, tears on their faces, the terror of anticipation in their eyes, waited on the ground, some kneeling, others seated in various postures.

Then there came a deep hush.

He stood there, a solitary figure, black against the crimson background of the western sky, his arms still upraised. It might have been a statue carved out of dark marble that stood on the spur of the cliff.

And then he began to speak.

His hands were still uplifted in the attitude of benediction; and the words that came from him were the words of the Benediction.

“The Peace of God which passeth all understanding.”

The Peace of God—that was the message which he delivered to that agitated multitude, and it fell upon their ears, soothing all who heard and banishing their fears. He gave them the message of the Father to His children—a message of love, of tenderness—a promise of protection, of infinite pity, of a compassion that knew no limits—outliving the life of the world, knowing no change through all ages, the only thing that suffered no change—a compassion which, being eternal, would outlive Time itself—a compassion which brought with it every blessing that man could know—nay, more—more than man could think of; a compassion that brought with it the supreme blessing that could come to man—the Peace of God which passeth all understanding!

He never travelled outside this message of Divine Peace, although he spoke for a full hour.

And while he spoke the meaning of that message fell upon the multitude who listened. They felt that Peace of which he spoke falling gently upon them as cold dew at the close of a day of intolerable heat. They realised what it meant to them. The Peace descended upon them, and they were sensible of its presence. The dread that had been hanging over them all the day was swept away as the morning mist had been dispersed. The apprehension of the Judgment was lost in the consciousness of a Divine Love surrounding them. They seemed to have passed from an atmosphere of foetid vapours into that of a meadow in the Spring time. They drank deep draughts of its sweetness and were refreshed.

When he had begun to speak the sun was not far from setting in the depths of a crimson sky, and before he had spoken for half an hour the immense red disc, magnified by the vapours in the air, was touching the horizon. With its disappearance the colour spread higher up the sky and drifted round to the north, gradually changing to the darkest purple. Even then it was quite possible for the people to see one another's features distinctly in the twilight, but half an hour later the figure of the preacher was but faintly seen through the dimness that had fallen over the coast. The twilight had been almost tropical in its brevity, and the effect of the clear voice of many modulations coming out of the darkness was strange, and to the ears that heard it, mysterious. Just before it ceased there swept upon the faces of his listeners a cool breath of air. It came with a suddenness that was startling. During all the day there had not been a breath. The heat had seemed to be so solid, and now the movement of the air gave the impression of the passing of a mysterious Presence. It was as if the wings of a company of angels were winnowing the air, as they fled by, bringing with them the perfume of their Paradise for the refreshing of the people of the earth. Only for a few minutes that cool air was felt, but for that time it was as if the Peace of God had been made tangible.

When the preacher ended with the words with which he had begun, the silence was like a sigh.

The people were on their knees. There was no one that did not feel that God was very nigh to him.

And the preacher felt it most deeply of all. There was a silence of intense solemnity, before the voice was heard once more speaking to Heaven in prayer—in thanksgiving for the Peace that had come upon this world from above.

He knew how fully his prayer had been answered when he talked to the young men and maidens who had been among his hearers. The excitement of the evening had passed away from all of them. At the beginning of his preaching there had been the sound of weeping among them. At first it had been loud and passionate; but gradually it had subsided until at the setting of the sun the terror which had possessed them gave place to the peace of the twilight, and now there was not one of them that did not feel the soothing influence that comes only when the angel of the evening hovers with shadowy outspread wings over the world.

They all walked slowly to their homes; some belonged to Porthawn and others to the inland villages of the valley of the Lana, as far away as Ruthallion, and the light breeze that had been felt during the preaching became stronger and less intermittent now. It was cool and gracious beyond expression, and it brought with it to the ears of all who walked along the cliffs the soothing whisper of the distant sea. The joyous tidings came that the sea was returning, and it seemed that with that news came also the assurance that the cause for dread was over and past.

And all this time the preacher had made no allusion to the voice that had sounded along the shore in the early part of the evening predicting the overthrow of the world. All that he had done was to preach the coming of Peace.

“You may resume your journeying, Mr. Wesley, as soon as you please. May he not, friend Pullsford?” said Hartwell when he had returned to his house. “There is no need for us to keep Mr. Wesley among us when we know that he is anxious to resume his preaching further west. You never mentioned the man's name, sir, and yet you have done all—nay, far more than we thought it possible for you to accomplish.”

“There is no need for me to tarry longer,” replied Wesley. “But I pray of you, my dear friends, not to think that I do not recognise the need there was for me to return to you with all speed. I perceived the great danger that threatened us through Pritchard, and I was glad that you sent for me. I hope you agree with me in believing that that danger is no longer imminent.”

“I scarce know how it happened,” said Hartwell; “but yesterday I had a feeling that unless you preached a direct and distinct rebuke to Pritchard, the work which you began here last month would suffer disaster, and yet albeit you did no more than preach the Word as you might at any time, making no reference to the things that have happened around us, I feel at the present moment that your position is, by the Grace of God, more promising of good than it has ever been.”

“Ay,” said Jake Pullsford. “But I am not so sure that the vanity of that man should not have been crushed. There is no telling to what length he may not go after all that has happened. The people should ha' been warned against him, and his sorceries exposed.”.

“Think you, Jake, that the best way to destroy the vanity of such as he would be by taking notice of what he said and magnifying it into a menace?” said Hartwell. “Believe me, my friend, that Mr. Wesley's way is the true one. Dick Pritchard's vanity got its hugest filip when he heard that Mr. Wesley had come back to preach against him. It will receive its greatest humiliation when he learns that Mr. Wesley made no remark that showed he knew aught of him and his prophecies.”

“He will take full credit to himself for what has happened—of that you may be sure,” said Jake, shaking his head. “Ay, and for what did not happen,” he continued as an afterthought. “Be certain that he will claim to have saved the world as Jonah saved the Ninevites. He will cling to Jonah to the end.”

“I am glad that I came hither when you called for me, my brethren,” said Wesley. “Let us look at the matter with eyes that look only at the final issue. I would fain banish from my mind every thought save one, and that is spiritual blessing of the people. If they have been soothed by my coming—if even the humblest of them has been led to feel something of what is meant by the words 'the Peace of God,' I give thanks to God for having called me back. I have no more to say.”

And that was indeed the last word that was said at that time respecting Pritchard and his utterances. Wesley and his friends felt that, however deeply the people had been impressed by the natural phenomena which had followed hard on his predictions of disaster to the world, he would not now be a source of danger to the work which had been begun in Cornwall. Wesley had, by his preaching, showed that he would give no countenance to the man. Those who thought that it would be consistent with his methods and his Methodism to take advantage of the terror with which the minds of the people had become imbued, in order to bring them into the classes, that had already been formed, were surprised to find him doing his utmost to banish their fears. He had preached the Gospel of Peace, not of Vengeance, the Gospel of Love, not of Anger.

Awakening shortly after midnight, Wesley heard the sound of the washing of the waters on the pebbles at the base of the cliffs. There was no noise of breaking waves, only the soft, even lisp and lap of the last ripples that were crushed upon the pebbles—grateful and soothing to his ears.

Suddenly there came to him another sound—the monotone of the watchman calling out of the distance:

“Repent—repent—repent! The Day of the Lord is at hand. Who shall abide the Day of His Wrath? Repent—repent—repent!”