re among them, and that they were asking questions about the
escape, and whispering together as if it had been something courageous
and almost commendable, and had set their hearts beating. Again,
sometimes he was aware that big Brother Andrew was sitting by his side on
the form, stroking his arm from time to time, and talking in his low
voice and aimless way about his mother and the last he saw of her. "She
followed me down the street crying," he said, "and I have often thought
of it since and been tempted to run away." Also he was aware that the dog
was with him always, licking the backs of his stiff hands and poking up a
cold snout into his downcast face.

All this time he was doing his duties automatically and apparently
without help from his consciousness, opening and closing the door as the
brothers passed in and out on their errands to the dead and dying, and
saying, "Praise be to God!" when a stranger knocked. It may be that his
body was merely answering to the habits of its intellect, and that his
soul, which had sustained a terrible blow, was lying stunned and swooning
within.

When it revived and he began to know and to feel once more, there was no
one with him, for the brothers were asleep in their beds and the dog was
in the courtyard, and the house was very quiet, for it was the middle of
the night. And then it came back to him, like a dream remembered in the
morning, that the Father had asked him to pray for Brother Paul that he
might fail in the errand on which he had sent him out into the world, and
though with his lips he had not promised, yet in his heart he had
undertaken to do so.

And being quite alone now, with no one but God for company, he went down
on his knees in his place by the door and clasped his hands together.

"O God," he prayed, "have pity on Paul, and on me, and on all of us! Keep
him from all danger and suffering and from the snares and assaults of the
Evil One! Grant that he may never find his sister--or anybody who knows
her--or anybody who can tell him where she is and what has become of
her----"

But having got so far he could get no farther, for suddenly it occurred
to him that this was a prayer which concerned Glory and himself as well.
It was only then that he realized the magnitude and awfulness of the task
he had undertaken. He had undertaken to ask God that Paul might not find
Glory either, and therefore that he on his part might never hear of her
again. When he put it