— Selling unchristian brushes to honest people. .
— Ha! there you're wrong, for Manichees was Christian. For them, says the Reverend, the sun itself was the visible symbol of Christ.
— They was not.
— It was so. How could you have the sun. .
— They was not, and what's more. .
— Here is the sexton coming now, he was there.
— They was not, and what if he was, he goes to church and makes up his own sermon, and afterward he'll tell you such and such was the Reverend's sermon which nobody heard but himself. Like the sermon on the American Legion. . him, he's as deaf as that coconut.
Every head but the buck turned to see the door thrown open, shaking the plate of glass and the configuration 
between the men and the storm. The Town Carpenter entered, pursued by a distant peal of thunder. — That damned racket, he said, shutting it out.
— It's rare, that you have thunder with snow, said the small man in the middle, appeasing.
— May it roll away and take my curse with it, the Town Carpenter growled, arrived at the bar. He squared his shoulders, reared his head, and looked round him. — Now do you know, after the Great Deluge there was no God? Well, there was not. With the world wet for a hundred years, there was no thunder, and men went around with their heads up, alone and unafraid they went, like heroes should, you know. Then it all dried off and the atmosphere up there recovered. He paused to kick the snow from his feet against the bar; and the dog waited till that was done to lie at his feet. — And then that damned thunder started, and scared them all so much, looking up to see nothing, that they took the images of terror right out of their own minds and hung them up there in the empty space above their empty heads. He drank down his glass. — There now, he said, putting it empty on the bar, and he reared his head, as though the buck's were the only face he would countenance. — I have a very important visitor, finally he brought out.
— Tom Swift, it must be, the strangler muttered, watching the Town Carpenter narrowly.
— To see him, you might not guess at the hero he is. Of course I recognized him immediately.
— A strange fellow got off the morning train, said the man in the middle. — Neither hat nor coat. Oh, you never know, you never know. Drunk perhaps. You never know.
Stealthily, the Town Carpenter looked at these two, his expression one of cunning. It was a look with which they were all familiar; and for its astute divining quality (that and the subsequent logical parallel of his conversation) he was often accused of perfect hearing. — There now, he said, pulling a filled glass to him, — you'd be surprised to see him perhaps, a man waited on by seven kings at a time, sixty dukes and a count for every day in the year, so modest and quiet as him.
— That train come in from the city, said the small man with beer.
— I've seen them, city people in the country, said the strangler. — I know them, terrified when they see things move without ticking or smoking.
— A man who sits with twelve archbishops on his right hand and twenty bishops on his left.
— They live in cities where nothing grows. Did you know that? Nothing grows in the city. Even their minds they keep steam-heated. Their horizons are dirty windowsills.
— Drunk, perhaps. You never know.
— Whose chamberlain is a bishop and king, and his chief cook a king and an abbot, he couldn't stoop to taking such titles as those. — Do you know what happens to people in cities? I'll tell you what happens to people in cities. They lose the seasons, that's what happens. They lose the extremes, the winter and summer. They lose the means, the spring and the fall. They lose the beginning and end of the day, and nothing grows but their bank accounts. Life in the city is just all middle, nothing is born and nothing dies. Things appear, and things are killed, but nothing begins and nothing ends.
— His domains lay from the three Indies to the ruins of Babylon, from Farther India to the tower of Babel. That's the voyage we're going to make. Waited on hand and foot by kings, from his humble looks you wouldn't believe it, from his quiet ways you'd never know. Of course I knew him immediately.
— You don't get heroes out of the cities. A city man is spread out too much.
— If you've ever watched the ground for a mole, tried to follow the silent movement of the course of his burrow and nothing moves, nothing but separate blades of grass, each of them moving for no good reason, and then the ground moves, and moves again, why that's the kind of a face he has.
— A simple man who is up against it, a man who knows what he's up against. You have to go to the country to find him. Out to the country or out to sea.
— In his dominions there are no poor, no thieves or robbers, and no dissension. Where he has come from there are no vices, no misers or flatterers, and no lies.
Snow whirled against the glass. The blue woman was held contorted for full half a minute. The Town Carpenter licked his lips, and gazed up at the movement on the cracked lips of the twelve-point buck who remained, unperturbed by the fly, looking down through glazed convexities of dust.
Streaks of sound pierced the woodwork, from the cavetto molding to stab through the stained ribs strained tongue-in-groove wainscoting the hallway, as though there were movement there.
— So, he burnt the throne of the sun with fire, did he? The throne of the sun!. . nine. . six, Reverend Gwyon muttered, standing over his littered desk, flinging over the pages of Job with the flat of three fingers. — Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. Tremble, do they? Which com-mandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealed up the stars. Riseth not, does it? Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, and the chambers of the south, does he! Gwyon looked up impatiently, no more than to take his eyes from the book laid open on top of the Letters of the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus. His clear eyes struck the door, and held there a moment, waiting. Then he returned to the pages before him. — Nineteen. . four… In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. . that's better, now, he muttered, turning pages. — Seven. . eleven. . and by it there is profit to them that see the sun. . uhm. . eleven. . seven. . Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. . yes. . hmmmm. . Truly the light is sweet, he repeated, raising his eyes now straight before him to the window, and the encumbered sky.
That impregnable meter of silence enveloped him directly he stopped speaking, and stood there erect and alone. There was nothing in his face to betray, or even suggest doubt; but his hands were not, as they might at first appear, resting their own weight and no more on the pages before him. As he stood unmoving so, the faint carnation under his nails became evenly fainter, draining away from the rims until they were, all together, blanched with the strain they sustained, streaked with the life that sustained them.
— One more day's dying, Gwyon murmured looking out at the sky. Would there be time? His fingertips regained their color. Even as they did, the lower part of his face drained of its fullness, as though the two were connected, or as though it were not two but one process, a continuous seepage down, and he caught his lower lip with concern. Would there be time? to make full proof of his ministry; and he searched the sky as though for answer. — One more day's dying, he repeated, searching the sky for the sun.