s, "we will go to see the baseball game
on Sunday, Clevelands and the Reds,--great game, you know." It was well
that Mr. Perkins was half-way out of the door before he finished his
sentence, for there was no telling what effect upon him the flush which
mounted to Brent's face and the horror in his eyes would have had.

Go to a baseball game on Sunday! What would his people think of such a
thing? How would he himself feel there,--he, notwithstanding his
renunciation of office, a minister of the gospel? He hastened to his
room, where he could be alone and think. The city indeed was full of
temptations to the young! And yet he knew he would be ashamed to tell
his convictions to Perkins, or to explain his horror at the proposition.
Again there came to him, as there had come many times before, the
realisation that he was out of accord with his fellows. He was not in
step with the procession. He had been warped away from the parallel of
every-day, ordinary humanity. In order to still the tumult in his
breast, he took his hat and wandered out upon the street. He wanted to
see people, to come into contact with them and so rub off some of the
strangeness in which their characters appeared to him.

The streets were all alight and alive with bustle. Here a fakir with
loud voice and market-place eloquence was vending his shoddy wares;
there a drunkard reeled or was kicked from the door of a saloon, whose
noiselessly swinging portals closed for an instant only to be reopened
to admit another victim, who ere long would be treated likewise. A
quartet of young negroes were singing on the pavement in front of a
house as he passed and catching the few pennies and nickels that were
flung to them from the door. A young girl smiled and beckoned to him
from a window, and another who passed laughed saucily up into his face
and cried, "Ah, there!" Everywhere was the inevitable pail flashing to
and fro. Sickened, disgusted, thrown back upon himself, Brent turned his
steps homeward again. Was this the humanity he wanted to know? Was this
the evil which he wanted to have a go with? Was Aunt Hester, after all,
in the right, and was her way the best? His heart was torn by a
multitude of conflicting emotions. He had wondered, in one of his
rebellious moods, if, when he was perfectly untrammelled, he would ever
pray; but on this night of nights, before he went wearily to bed, he
remained long upon his knees.

CHAPTER XV

Brent found himse