elf as he sat that night by the open
window, arraigning his past before the judgment-seat of conscience. For
three years he had worked hard somewhere in the slums; then this living
had fallen to him. He had taken it, and from that day forward his record
was very much of a blank. The parish was small and well ordered; there
was little to do in it, and the Salvation Army had seized upon and
reclaimed two of the three confirmed drunkards it could boast.

His guest's saying echoed in his brain like the catch of a tune--"that
_you_ might lead that life and attain that death." Supposing that
he were bidden so to do now, this very night, would he indeed "think
differently"? He had become a priest to serve his Maker. How would it be
were that Maker to command that he should serve Him in this extreme and
heroic fashion? Would he flinch from the steel, or would he meet it as
the martyrs met it of old?

Physically he was little suited to such an enterprise, for in appearance
he was slight and pale, and in constitution delicate. Also, there was
another reason against the thing. High Church and somewhat ascetic in
his principles, in the beginning he had admired celibacy, and in secret
dedicated himself to that state. But at heart Thomas was very much a
man, and of late he had come to see that which is against nature is
presumably not right, though fanatics may not hesitate to pronounce
it wrong. Possibly this conversion to more genial views of life was
quickened by the presence in the neighbourhood of a young lady whom
he chanced to admire; at least it is certain that the mere thought of
seeing her no more for ever smote him like a sword of sudden pain.

*****

That very night--or so it seemed to him, and so he believed--the Angel
of the Lord stood before him as he was wont to stand before the men of
old, and spoke a summons in his ear. How or in what seeming that summons
came Thomas Owen never told, and we need not inquire. At the least he
heard it, and, like the Apostles, he arose and girded his loins to obey.
For now, in the hour of trial, it proved that this man's faith partook
of the nature of their faith. It was utter and virgin; it was not
clogged with nineteenth-century qualifications; it had never dallied
with strange doctrines, or kissed the feet of pinchbeck substitutes for
God. In his heart he believed that the Almighty, without intermediary,
but face to face, had bidden him to go forth into the wilderness there
to p