ternal hell for them. Whittenden heard about it,
and came running, book in one hand, surplice in the other. The way he
made that service for the dying hum was a caution; but he got it done
in time, before the first man died." Reed's face was growing scarlet
with the excitement of the memory. "It was Protestant, of course; but
they didn't know English enough to find it out, and they died happy in
the certainty that he'd saved them. Then he yanked off his surplice as
fast as he'd yanked it on, and went to work to help us lay them out
decently, before their wives and children saw them. I tell you what,
Brenton--" Lost to the present in the old, exciting memory, Reed forgot
himself and started up. "Oh, damn!" he said, and fainted quietly away,
cut out of consciousness of agony unspeakable.

An hour afterward, Brenton left Reed comparatively comfortable, and
went his way. Like most men in such an emergency, he had been
thoroughly terrified. The reaction from his terror left him thoughtful,
even a little morbid. The fact of his manifest uselessness in the eyes
of Reed's trained nurse led him to doubt his usefulness in the more
legitimate fields of his own profession. For the rest, his friends were
all of a piece. Opdyke and Whittenden alike had risen to the emergency
with which fate had confronted them, had done their downright, obvious
duty, regardless of any consequences beyond the simple one of
fulfilling the immediate need. They were men of action and sincerity,
men who really counted to the world. He--

He smiled bitterly. Reed Opdyke's chaff, meant in all good nature, had
struck home to the very marrow of his self-distrust. He had clambered
to a pedestal where he stood and preached banal things which, in
reality, he doubted, and smiled at his congregation, and sniffed
contentedly at the fumes of incense rising about him, incense of which
he was but too well aware. He would have had no idea how to stop it;
but, if the truth were told, he had had no especial wish to stop it, if
he could. It had been a pleasant experience, this knowing himself the
idol of a steadily increasing share of his congregation. He had known
it, as a matter of course; he had done his best to convince himself
that it came from the quality of the gospel which he preached, from the
sincerity and fire with which he preached it.

Now, all at once, denying nothing of the popularity, the adulation, as
Opdyke had called it, he forced himself to deny his