s acting itself before him he realized little. He
saw only a venerable colleague stricken by some sudden and terrible
ailment.

Then William Williams raised his thin arms above his head. Out of his
eyes rained challenge, denunciation, anathema! Mutely he was hurling the
curse of God's church. With the last ounce of his attenuated strength he
was struggling for the voice which at this moment of supreme need had
failed him. Over the body of the congregation, as the preacher halted,
fell a deadly stillness.

From the throat of the old man came a strangled groan, which had sought
to be a command for silence, and he crumpled forward. Life had gone out
of him, and Sam Haymond, lifting both hands, spoke in a voice of hushed
awe, "My brethren, the hand of God has fallen here."

CHAPTER XIX

About the churchyard, like sentinels of peace, stood ranks of elms and
silver oaks. They had been old and gnarled of trunk, when the man whose
life had just guttered out inside had come, young and militant, to
preach the letter of that law, whose spirit was to his understanding a
fourth dimension. Through the long windows of colored but artless glass,
now partly raised, poured slanting panels of summer sun, mottling the
interior and its occupants with dashes of red and blue.

Into the hush which had fallen there crept also those minors that seemed
to belong rather to an exaggerated quiet than to sound: the trill of a
bird, voicing an overflow of joy and the humming of bees among the vines
of the church yard, where slanting headstones bore quaintly archaic
names and life dates of sailors home from the sea. A wandering butterfly
had drifted in and was winging its bright way about the place where the
sermon had been interrupted. But the bated breath of awed amazement
broke at the end of a long-held pause into a buzz of whispered
exclamation.

Conscience rose unsteadily and started forward, her hands clutched to
her breast, and the minister came hurriedly down the pulpit stairs.

Later in the day when the body still lay in the parlor of the Tollman
house and Conscience sat almost as motionless near by, Eben Tollman
paced the floor with features set in an expression unpleasantly
suggestive of the undertaker's professional solemnity.

Possibly Tollman was not inconsolably cast down. So long as the old
man's precarious life spark had been a danger signal, burning against
the influence of Stuart Farquaharson, it was vital that he sh