ers found the sentiment
familiar. It was the same spirit which, trammeled by poverty and
ignorance, stirs many a man weary of a hopeless struggle for better
things, and blazes into strange coruscations of eloquence in market-square
orations and from the platforms of conventicles where men whose religion
is a thing of terror worship the jealous God of the Hebrews.

"Nay, sit still and hear." The words fell as though they were an order. "I
am a poor man, a maker of shoes for the poor who could not always buy
them, and I had one daughter. She was all I had, and I wrestled with the
devil for her that she might escape perdition through the snare of beauty.
But the nephew of a rich man cast desiring eyes upon her, and Satan helped
him. He might well be strong and comely, for he fed on the finest, while
when trade was bad half of us went cold and hungry in Stoney Clough; but
he was filled with the wiles of the devil and the lusts of the flesh, so
when there were plenty of his own kind to choose among he tempted the poor
man's daughter who worked for a pittance in his uncle's mill. Her mother
died; they mocked me at the chapel; and I have come four thousand miles to
find him, but now and here he shall answer. Ralph Lorimer of Orb Mill,
where is Minnie Lee?"

His hand was clear of the threadbare coat now; something glinted in it,
and I looked into the muzzle of a pistol. But Geoffrey Ormond, in spite of
his surface languidness, was quick of thought and action, and with swift
dexterity gripped his right arm from behind. Then, and we were never quite
sure how it happened, though the weapon was evidently a cheap Belgian
revolver, and perhaps the hammer shook down, there was a ringing crash, a
cry from Grace, a tinkle of falling glass, and Adam Lee stood
empty-handed, while Ormond, who flung down the smoking weapon, said
coolly:

"It is safer with me. These things are dangerous to people who don't
understand them, and you may be thankful that, without perhaps intending
it, you are not a murderer."

"Thank you, Geoffrey," said Colonel Carrington. "Lee, sit down. I don't
know what your religious or political crazes are, and it doesn't matter,
but I have rather more power here than an English magistrate, and if you
move again, by the Lord I'll send you in irons to Winnipeg for attempted
murder. Mr. Lorimer, I am not inclined to thank you, but if you have any
explanation you had better give it to him."

Lee, I learned, was a fearle