his own brain,
and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more
remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of
his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and
behold! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, had the answer
waiting for him! When he had gone a little further, and the powerful
range of possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry of his
father, the image-maker, in the exodus from the unholy city of Ur, and
in the influence of the new nomadic life upon the little deistic family
group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he felt that the hand of
Providence was plainly discernible in the matter. The book was to be
blessed from its very inception.

Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the sidewalk and his mind
all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work, and impatience to
be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men and boys who occupied the
whole path, and were moving forward so noiselessly that he had not heard
them coming. He almost ran into the leader of this little procession,
and began a stammering apology, the final words of which were left
unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his talk were all the faces he
saw.

In the centre of the group were four working-men, bearing between them
an extemporized litter of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across
them with spikes. Most of what this litter held was covered by another
blanket, rounded in coarse folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath
its farther end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown upward at
such an angle as to hide everything beyond to those in front. The tall
young minister, stepping aside and standing tip-toe, could see sloping
downward behind this hedge of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with
wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, were moving
ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking sound.

Theron instinctively joined himself to those who followed the litter--a
motley dozen of street idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers
explained to him that the man was one of Jerry Madden's workmen in the
wagon-shops, who had been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his
employer's house, and, being unused to such work, had fallen from the
top and broken all his bones. They would have cared for him at Madden's
house, but he had insisted upon being taken home. His name was MacEvoy,
and he was Joey Mac