hted.

"You have spoken of the sufferings of lost and wretched men," he went
on; "think of His sufferings! You have spoken of your loneliness; think
of His loneliness!"

Then suddenly Bart Toyner made a gesture as a slave might who casts off
the chains of bondage. The appeal to which he was listening was not for
him, but for some man whom the preacher's imagination had drawn in his
place, who did not appropriate the great Sacrifice and seek to live in
its power. He did not now seek to explain again that the death of Christ
was to him as an altar, the point in human thought where always the fire
of the divine life descends upon the soul self-offered in like
sacrifice. He had tried to explain this; now he tried no more, but he
held out his hands with a sign of joy and recovered strength.

"You came to help me; you have prayed for me; you have helped me; you
have been given something to say. Listen: you have told me of Abraham;
he was called to go out alone, quite alone. Now you have spoken to me of
Another who was alone." Toyner was incoherent. "That was why _He_ bore
it, that we might know that it was possible to have faith all alone
because He had it. It is easy to believe in God holding us up when
others do, but awfully hard all alone. He knew that, He warned them to
keep together; but all the same He lived out His prayers alone."

Toyner looked at the preacher, love and reverence in his eyes. "You
saved me once," he said; "you have saved me again."

But the preacher went home very sorrowful, for he did not believe that
Bart Toyner was saved.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The spiritual strength that proceeds from every holy man had again
flowed in life-giving stream from the preacher to Bart Toyner. The help
was adequate. Toyner never became intoxicated again.

His father died; and for two years or more the mother, who had lived
frugally all her life, still lived frugally, although land and money had
been left to her. The mother would not trust her son, and yet gradually
she began to realise that it was he who was quietly heaping into her lap
all those joys of which she had been so long deprived. At length she
died, the happy mother of a son who had won the respect of other men.

It was after that that Toyner wedded Ann Markham. Then, when he had the
power to live a more individual life of enjoyment and effort, it began
to be known little by little that these two had committed that sin
against society so hard to f