I am!"

Mercy tried hard to understand him, and tried in vain. Could this be the
preacher whose words had charmed, purified, ennobled her? Was this the
man whose sermon had drawn tears from women about her whom she knew to
be shameless and hardened in crime? Yes! The eyes that now rested on her
humorously were the beautiful eyes which had once looked into her soul.
The voice that had just addressed a jesting question to her was the deep
and mellow voice which had once thrilled her to the heart. In the pulpit
he was an angel of mercy; out of the pulpit he was a boy let loose from
school.

"Don't let me startle you," he said, good-naturedly, noticing her
confusion. "Public opinion has called me by harder names than the name
of 'Radical.' I have been spending my time lately--as I told you just
now--in an agricultural district. My business there was to perform the
duty for the rector of the place, who wanted a holiday. How do you think
the experiment has ended? The Squire of the parish calls me a Communist;
the farmers denounce me as an Incendiary; my friend the rector has been
recalled in a hurry, and I have now the honor of speaking to you in the
character of a banished man who has made a respectable neighborhood too
hot to hold him."

With that frank avowal he left the luncheon table, and took a chair near
Mercy.

"You will naturally be anxious," he went on, "to know what my offense
was. Do you understand Political Economy and the Laws of Supply and
Demand?"

Mercy owned that she did _not_ understand them.

"No more do I--in a Christian country," he said. "That was my offense.
You shall hear my confession (just as my aunt will hear it) in two
words." He paused for a little while; his variable manner changed
again. Mercy, shyly looking at him, saw a new expression in his eyes--an
expression which recalled her first remembrance of him as nothing had
recalled it yet. "I had no idea," he resumed, "of what the life of a
farm-laborer really was, in some parts of England, until I undertook the
rector's duties. Never before had I seen such dire wretchedness as I saw
in the cottages. Never before had I met with such noble patience under
suffering as I found among the people. The martyrs of old could endure,
and die. I asked myself if they could endure, and _live_, like the
martyrs whom I saw round me?--live, week after week, month after month,
year after year, on the brink of starvation; live, and see their pining
childre