n, I think something is
going to happen."

"Tell me," said Percy, leaning forward.

"Well, I saw Templeton a week before he died, and he put the idea in my
head.... Look here, father. It may be this Eastern affair that is coming
on us; but somehow I don't think it is. It is in religion that something
is going to happen. At least, so I think.... Father, who in God's name
is Felsenburgh?"

Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again,
that he stared a moment without speaking.

Outside, the summer night was very still. There was a faint vibration
now and again from the underground track that ran twenty yards from the
house where they sat; but the streets were quiet enough round the
Cathedral. Once a hoot rang far away, as if some ominous bird of passage
were crossing between London and the stars, and once the cry of a woman
sounded thin and shrill from the direction of the river. For the rest
there was no more than the solemn, subdued hum that never ceased now
night or day.

"Yes; Felsenburgh," said Father Blackmore once more. "I cannot get that
man out of my head. And yet, what do I know of him? What does any one
know of him?"

Percy licked his lips to answer, and drew a breath to still the beating
of his heart. He could not imagine why he felt excited. After all, who
was old Blackmore to frighten him? But old Blackmore went on before he
could speak.

"See how people are leaving the Church! The Wargraves, the Hendersons,
Sir James Bartlet, Lady Magnier, and then all the priests. Now they're
not all knaves--I wish they were; it would be so much easier to talk of
it. But Sir James Bartlet, last month! Now, there's a man who has spent
half his fortune on the Church, and he doesn't resent it even now. He
says that any religion is better than none, but that, for himself, he
just can't believe any longer. Now what does all that mean?... I tell
you something is going to happen. God knows what! And I can't get
Felsenburgh out of my head.... Father Franklin---"

"Yes?"

"Have you noticed how few great men we've got? It's not like fifty years
ago, or even thirty. Then there were Mason, Selborne, Sherbrook, and
half-a-dozen others. There was Brightman, too, as Archbishop: and now!
Then the Communists, too. Braithwaite is dead fifteen years. Certainly
he was big enough; but he was always speaking of the future, not of the
present; and tell me what big man they have had since then! And now
there's t