h, you know him, then? Oh, he's all right, Yen Sin."

It was growing dark outside, and colder, with a rising wind from
landward to seaward against the tide. A sense of something odd and wrong
came over me; it was a moment before I could make it out. The fire was
dead in the stove for the first time in memory and the Vestal irons were
cold. Yen Sin asked me to light the lamp. In the waxing yellow glow he
turned his eyes to mine, and mine were big.

"You know Mista God?" he questioned.

"Oh, yes," I answered soberly. "Yes, indeed."

"Mista God allee same like Mista Yen Sin, yes?"

I felt myself paling at his blasphemy, and thought of lightning.

"Mista God," he went on in the same speculative tone, "Mista God know
allee bad things, allee same like Mista Yen Sin, yes?"

"Where is the minister?" I demanded in desperation.

"Mista Yen Sin likee see Mista Minista." When he added, with a
transparent hand fluttering over his heart: "Like see pletty quick now,"
I seemed to fathom for the first time what was happening to him.

"Wait," I cried, too full of awe to know what I said. "Wait, wait, Yen
Sin. I'll fetch 'im."

It was dark outside, the sky overcast, and the wind beginning to moan a
high note across the roofs as it swept in from the moors and out again
over the graying waters. In the shore street my eyes chanced upon the
light of Center Church, and I remembered that it was meeting-night.

* * *

There was only a handful of worshippers that evening, but a thousand
could have had no more eyes it seemed to me as I tiptoed down the aisle
with the scandalized pad-pad of Emsy Nickerson's pursuing soles behind
my back. Confusion seized me; I started to run, and had come almost up
to Mister Malden before I had wit enough to discover that it wasn't
Minister Malden at all, but Mate Snow in the pulpit, standing with an
open hymn-book in one hand and staring down at me with grim, inquiring
eyes. After a time I managed to stammer:

"The Chinaman, you know--he's goin' to die--the minister--"

Then I fled, dodging Emsy's legs. Confused voices followed me; Aunt
Nickerson's full of a nameless horror; Mate Snow's, thundering: "Brother
Hemans, you will please continue the meeting. I will go and see what I
can do. But your prayers are needed here."

Poor Minister Malden! His hour had struck--the hour so long awaited--and
now it was Mate Snow who should go to answer it. Perhaps the night had
something to do with it, and the me