was the first cause of the tumult sat alone in his
cell-like chamber under the church, a bare room without carpet or rug,
and having no furniture except a block bed, a small washstand, two
chairs, a table, a prayer stool and crucifix, and a print of the Virgin
and Child. He heard the singing of the people outside, but it brought him
neither inspiration nor comfort. Nature could no longer withstand the
strain he had put upon it, and he was in deep dejection. It was one of
those moments of revulsion which comes to the strongest soul when at the
crown or near the crown of his expectations he asks himself, "What is the
good?" A flood of tender recollections was coming over him. He was
thinking of the past, the happy past, the past of love and innocence
which he had spent with Glory, of the little green isle in the Irish Sea,
and of all the sweetness of the days they had passed together before she
had fallen to the temptations of the world and he had become the victim
of his hard if lofty fate. Oh, why had he denied himself the joys that
came to all others? To what end had he given up the rewards of life which
the poorest and the weakest and the meanest of men may share? Love,
woman's love, why had he turned his back upon it? Why had he sacrificed
himself? O God, if, indeed, it were all in vain!

Brother Andrew put his head in at the half-open door. His brother, the
pawnbroker, was there and had something to say to the Father. Pincher's
face looked over Andrew's shoulder. The muscles of the man's eyes were
convulsed by religious mania.

"I've just sold my biziness, sir, and we 'aven't a roof to cover us now!"
he cried, in the tone of one who had done something heroic.

John asked him what was to become of his mother.

"Lor', sir, ain't it the beginning of the end? That's the gawspel, ain't
it? 'The foxes hev 'oles and the birds of the air hev nests----'"

And then close behind the man, interrupting him and pushing him aside,
there came another with fixed and staring eyes, crying: "Look 'ere,
Father! Look! Twenty years I 'obbled on a stick, and look at me now!
Praise the Lawd, I'm cured, en' no bloomin' errer! I'm a brand as was
plucked from the burnin' when my werry ends 'ad caught the flames!
Praise the Lawd, amen!"

John rebuked them and turned them out of the room, but he was almost in
as great a frenzy. When he had shut the door his mind went back to
thoughts of Glory. She, too, was hurrying to the doom that was com