s from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy;
and the first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet,
held men as still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour
in his illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill.
But the heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.

"This poor fellow is dotty," he said good-humouredly to the crowd. "I
found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
there a constable to spare to take care of him?"

There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the
tall young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the
shop, who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young
man away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing
chapter. And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.

II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE

The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past become
less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain
that the editor of _The Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce
and final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the
giraffe. It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time,
how the statement "God is Spirit" could be reconciled with the statement
"The earth is His footstool." It was in vain that he cried with an
accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for
pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain
that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific
calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing
to them all they that passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly
sincere indignation never stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate
Hill? Never. The little man who edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his
shop on starlit evenings and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion
of his holy war upon the holy place. He might have spared his emotion.
The cross at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of
it were alike remote from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally
uplifted and alone in the empty h