mpathy and compassion, deepened and intensified by a poignant sense
of failure, Shock stood up to deliver to them his last message. He
would speak the truth to-night, and speak it he did, without a tinge of
embarrassment or fear. As his words began to flow he became conscious
of a new strength, of a new freedom, and the joy of his new strength
and freedom swept him along on a full tide of burning speech. He
abandoned his notes, from which he had hitherto feared to be far
separated; he left the desk, which had been to him a barricade for
defence, and stood up before the people. His theme was the story of the
leprous man who dared to come to the Great Healer in all the
hideousness of his disease and who was straightway cleansed. After
reading the words he stood facing them a few moments in silence and
then, without any manner of introduction, he began:

"That's what you want, men. You need to be made clean, you need to be
made strong." The people stared at him as if he had gone mad, it was so
unlike his usual formal, awkward self. Quietly, but with intense and
serious earnestness, he spoke to them of their sins, their drunken
orgies, their awful profanity, their disregard of everything religious,
their open vices and secret sins.

"Say," said Ike to The Kid, who sat next to him, "they'll be gettin'
out their guns sure!" But there was no anger in the faces lifted up to
the speaker; the matter was too serious for anger and the tone was too
kindly for offence. Without hesitation Shock went on with his terribly
relentless indictment of the men who sat before him. Then, with a swift
change of tone and thought, he cried in a voice vibrating with
compassion:

"And you cannot help it, men! The pity of it is, you cannot help it!
You cannot change your hearts; you love these things, you cannot shake
them off, they have grown upon you and have become your fixed habits.
Some of you have tried: I know you have had your periods of remorse and
you have sought to escape, but you have failed."

He paused a moment, and then continued in a voice humble and remorseful:

"I have failed, too. I thought in my pride and my folly that I could
help you, but I have failed. We have failed together, men--what then is
before us?"

His voice took a deeper tone, his manner was earnestly respectful and
tenderly sympathetic, as he set before them the Divine Man, so quick to
sympathise, so ready and so powerful to help.

"He is the same to-night, m