Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/216

 accursed. We can none of us forget how our father Abraham, standing at his tent-door on the plains of Mamre, entertained three angels unawares. And we, too, his descendants, are always on the look out for the visitors from heaven. Do they ever tarry with any of us for more than a night's lodging? Alas! that the very proof of our guest's celestial nature is the swiftness with which he vanishes at daybreak like a dream. But oftener the stranger we receive, though coming from another world, is not from above. His beauty, indeed, seems angelic, and he is clad in garments of light. For a while we are glad to be deceived, cherishing and prizing our guest, the more perhaps for those very qualities which should warn us of his origin. So we say to him, "Thou art he for whom we have been looking. Abide, with us here for ever." And he takes us at our word.