The waiter was still at the corner of the court, and when John came up he spoke again. "There must be sem amoosement knockin' women abart, but I can't see it myself." Then in a simple way he began to talk about his "missis," and what a good creature she was, and finally announced himself "gyme" to help a parson "as stood up to that there drunken blowke for sake of a woman."

"What's your name?" said John.

"Jupe," said the man, and then something stirred in John's memory.

On the following day John Storm dined with his uncle at Downing Street. The Prime Minister was waiting in the library. In evening dress, with his back to the fireplace and his hands enlaced behind him, he looked even more thin and gaunt than before. He welcomed John with a few familiar words and a smile. His smile was brief and difficult, like that which drags across the face of an invalid. Dinner was announced immediately, and the old man took the young one's arm and they passed into the dining-room.

The panelled chamber looked cold and cheerless. It was lighted by a single lamp in the middle of the table. They took their seats at opposite sides. The statesman's thin hair shone on his head like streaks of silver. John exercised a strong physical influence upon him, and all through the dinner his bleak face kept smiling.

"I ought to apologize for having nobody to meet you, but I had something to say—something to suggest—and I thought perhaps——"

John interrupted with affectionate protestations, and a tremor passed over the wrinkles about the old man's eyes.

"It is a great happiness to me, my dear boy, that you have turned your back on that Brotherhood, but I presume you intend to adhere to the Church?"

John intended to take priest's orders without delay, and then go on with his work as a clergyman.

"Just so, just so"—the long, tapering fingers drummed on the table—"and I should like to do something to help you."

Then sipping at his wine-glass of water, the Prime Minister, in his slow, deep voice and official tone, began to detail his scheme. There was a bishopric vacant. It was only a colonial one—the Bishopric of Colombo. The income was small, no more than seventeen hundred pounds, the work was not light, and there were fifty clergy. Then a colonial bishopric was not usually a stepping-stone to preferment at home, yet still——

John interrupted again. "You are most kind, uncle, but I am only looking forward to living the life of a poor priest, out of sight of the world and the Church."

"Surely Colombo is sufficiently out of sight, my boy?"

"But I see no necessity to leave London."

The Prime Minister glanced at him steadily, with the concentrated expression of a man who is accustomed to penetrate the thoughts and feelings of another.

"Why then—why did you——"

"Why did I leave the monastery, uncle? Because I had come to see that the monastic system was based on a faulty ideal of Christianity, which had been tried for the greater part of nineteen hundred years and failed. The theory of monasticism is that Christ died to redeem our carnal nature, and all we have to do is to believe and pray. But it is not enough that Christ died once. He must be dying always—every day—and in every one of us. God is calling on us in this age to seek a new social application of the Gospel, or, shall I say, to go back to the old one?"

"And that is——?"

"To present Christ in practical life as the living Master and King and example, and to apply Christianity to the life of our own time."

The Prime Minister had not taken his eyes off him. "What does this mean?" he had asked himself, but he only smiled his difficult smile and began to talk lightly. If this creed applied to the individual it applied also to the State; but think of a cabinet conducting the affairs of a nation on the charming principle of "taking no thought for the morrow," and "loving your enemies," and "turning the other cheek," and "selling all and giving to the poor"!

John stuck to his guns. If the Christian religion could not be the ultimate authority to rule a Christian nation, it was only because we lacked faith and trusted too much to mechanical laws made by statesmen rather than to moral laws made by Christ. "Either the life of Christ, as the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing. If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!"

The Prime Minister continued to ask himself, "What is the key to this?" and to look at John as he would have looked at a problem that had to be solved, but he only went on smiling and talking lightly. It was true we said a prayer and took an oath on the Bible in the Houses of Parliament, but did anybody think for a moment that we intended to trust the nation to the charming romanticism of the politics of Jesus? As for the Church, it was founded on acts of Parliament, it was endowed and established by the State, its head was the sovereign, its clergy were civil servants who went to levees and hung on the edge of drawing-rooms and troubled the knocker of No. 10 Downing-Street. And as for Christ's laws—in this country they were interpreted by the Privy Council and were under the direct control of a State department. Still, it was a harmless superstition that we were a Christian nation. It helped to curb the masses of the people, and if that was what John was thinking of——

The Prime Minister paused and stopped.

"Tell me, my boy," touching John's arm, "do you intend yourself to live—in short, the—well, after the example of the life of Christ?"

"As far as my weak and vain and sinful nature will permit, uncle!"

"And in what way would you propose to apply your new idea of Christianity?"

"My experiment would be made on a social basis, sir, and first of all in relation to women." John was hot all over, and his face had flushed up to the eyes.

The Prime Minister glanced stealthily across the table, passed his thin hand across his forehead, and thought, "So that's how it is!" But John was deep in his theme and saw nothing. The present position of women was intolerable. Upon the well-being of women, especially of working women, the whole welfare of society rested. Yet what was their condition? Think of it—their dependence on man, their temptations, their rewards, their punishments! Three halfpence an hour was the average wage of a working woman in England!—and that in the midst of riches, in the heart of luxury, and with one easy and seductive means of escape from poverty always open. Ruin lay in wait for them, and was beckoning them and enticing them in the shape of dancing houses and music halls and rich and selfish men.

"Not one man in a million, sir, would come through such an ordeal unharmed. And yet what do we do?—what does the Church do for these brave creatures on whose virtue and heroism the welfare of the nation depends? If they fall it cuts them off, and there is nothing before them but the streets or crime or the Union or suicide. And meanwhile it marries the men who have tempted them to the snug and sheltered darlings for whose wealth or rank or beauty they have been pushed aside. Oh, uncle, when I walk down Regent Street in the daytime I am angry, but when I walk down Regent Street at night I am ashamed. And then to think of the terrible solitude of London to working girls who want to live pure lives—the terrible spiritual loneliness!"

John's voice was breaking, but the Prime Minister had almost ceased to hear. Thinking he had realized the truth at last, his own youth seemed to be sitting before him and he felt a deep pity.

"Coffee here or in the library, your lordship?" said the man at his elbow.

"The library," he answered, and taking John's arm again he returned to the other room. There was a fire burning now, and a book lay under the lamp on a little table, with a silver paper-cutter through the middle to mark the page.

"How you remind me of your mother sometimes, John! That was just like her voice, do you know—just!"

Two hours afterward he led John Storm down the long corridor to the hall. His bleak face looked soft and his deep voice had a slight tremor. "Good-night, my dear boy, and remember your money is always waiting for you. Until your Christian social state is established you are only an advocate of socialism, and may fairly use your own. If yours is the Christianity of the first century it has to exist in the nineteenth, you know. You can't live on air or fly without wings. I shall be curious to see what approach, to the Christian ideal the condition of civilization admits of. Yet I don't know what your religious friends and the humdrum herd will think of you—mad probably, or at least weak and childish and perhaps even a hunter after easy popularity. But good-night, and God bless you in, your people's church and Devil's Acre!"

John was flushed and excited. He had been talking of his plans, his hopes, his expectations. God would provide for him in this as in everything, and then God's priest ought to be God's poor. Meantime two gentlemen in plush waited for him at the door. One handed him his hat, the other his stick and gloves.

Then with regular steps, and his hands behind him, the Prime Minister paced back through the quiet corridors. Returning to the library, he took up his book and tried to read. It was a novel, but he could not attend to the incidents in other people's lives. From time to time he said to himself: "Poor boy! Will he find her? Will he save her?" One pathetic idea had fixed itself on his mind—John Storm's love of God was love of a woman, and she was fallen and wrecked and lost.

A fortnight later John wrote to Glory:

"Fairly under weigh at last, dear Glory! Taken priest's orders, got the Bishop's 'license to officiate,' and found myself a church. It is St. Mary Magdalene's, Crown Street, Soho, a district that has borne for three hundred years the name of the 'Devil's Acre,' bears it still, and deserves it. The church is an old proprietary place, licensed, not consecrated, formerly belonging to Greek, or Italian, or French, or some other refugees, but long shut up and now much out of repair. Present owners, a company of Greek merchants, removed from Soho to the City, and being too poor (as trustees) to renovate the structure, they have forced me to get money for that purpose from my uncle, the Prime Minister. But the money is my own, apparently, my uncle having in my interest demanded from my father ten thousand pounds out of my mother's dowry, and got it. And now I am spending two thousand on the repair of my church buildings, notwithstanding the protests of the Prime Minister, who calls me 'chaplain to the Greek-Turks,' and of Mrs. Callender, who has discovered that I am a 'maudlin, sentimental, daft young spendthrift.' Dare say I am all that and a good deal more, as the wise world counts wisdom—but it matters little!

"Have not waited for the workmen, though, to begin operations. Took first services last Sunday. No organist, no choir, no clerk, and next to no congregation. Just the church cleaner, a good, simple old soul named Pincher, her son, a reformed drunkard and pawnbroker, and another convert who is a club waiter. Nevertheless, I went through the whole service, morning and evening, prayers, psalms, and sermon. God will be the more glorified.

"Have started my new crusade on behalf of women, too, and made various processions of three persons through the streets of Soho. First, my pawnbroker bearing the banner (a white cross, the object of various missiles), next my waiter carrying a little harmonium, and familiarly known as the 'organ man,' and finally myself in my cassock. Last mentioned proves to be a highly popular performance, being generally understood to be a man in a black petticoat. We have had a nightly accompaniment of a much larger procession, though, calling themselves 'Skellingtons,' otherwise the 'Skeletons,' an army of low women and roughs; who live vulture lives on this poor, soiled, grimy, forgotten world. Thank God, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and they know it!

"Behind my church, in a dark, unwholesome alley called. Crook Lane, we have a clergy house, at present let out in tenements, the cellar being occupied as a gin shop. As soon as these premises can be cleared of their encumbrances I shall turn them into a club for working girls. Why not? In the old days the Church came to the people: let it come to the people now. Here we are in the midst of this mighty stronghold of the devil's kingdom of sin and crime. Foreign clubs, casinos, dancing academies, and gambling houses are round about us. What are we to do? Put up a forest of props (as at the Abbey) and keep off touch and contamination? God forbid! Let us go down into these dens of moral disease and disinfect them. The poor working girls, of Soho want their Sunday: give it them. They want music and singing: give it them. They want dancing: give them that also, for God's sake, give it them in your churches, or the devil will give it them in his hells!

"Expect to be howled at of course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink of perdition, will be a better fruit, of religion than some of them have seen for many a year.

"As soon as the workmen have cleared out I am going to establish a daily service and keep the church open always. Still at Mrs. Callender's, you see; but I am refusing all invitations, except as a priest, and already I don't seem to, have time to draw my breath. No income connected with St. Mary Magdalene's, or next to none, just enough to pay the caretaker; but I must not complain of that, for it is the accident to which I owe my church, nobody else wanting it under the circumstances. I had begun to think my time in the monastery wasted, but God knew better. It will help me to live the life of poverty, of purity, of freedom from the world.

"Love to the grandfather and the ladies. How I wish you were with me in the thick of the fight! Sometimes I dream you are, too, and I fancy I see you in the midst of these bright young things with their flowers and feathers—they will make beautiful Christians yet! Oddly enough, on the day you travelled to the island, every hour that took you farther away seemed to bring you nearer. Greetings!"



VII.

"Glenfaba,'the Oilan.'

"Oh, gracious and grateful friend, at length you have remembered the existence of the 'poor lone crittur' living in dead-alive land! Only that I lack gall to make oppression bitter, I should of course return your belated epistle by the Dead Letter Office, marked 'Unknown' across your 'Dear Glory,' there being no longer anybody in these regions who has a plausible claim to that dubious title. But, alas! I am not my own woman now, and with tears of shame I acknowledge that any letter from London comes like an angel's whisper breathed to me through the air.

"I dare say you have been unreasonable enough to think that I ought to have written to tell you of my arrival; and knowing that man is born to vanity as the sparks fly upward, I have more than once intended to take pen in hand and write; but there is something so sleepy in this island atmosphere that my good resolution has hitherto been a stillborn babe that has breathed but never cried!

"Know then that my journey hither was performed with due celerity and no further disaster than befalls me when, as usual, I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and left undone those things which I ought to have done—the former in this instance having reference to various bouts of crying—which drew forth the sympathy of a compassionate female sharper in the train—and the latter to the catch of my sachel, which enabled that obliging person to draw forth my embroidered pocket-handkerchief in exchange.

"I was in good time for the steamboat at Liverpool, and it was crowded, according to its wont, with the Lancashire lads and lasses, in whom affection is as contagious as the mumps. Being in the dumps myself on sailing out of the river, and thinking of the wild excitement with which I had sailed into it, I think I should have found that I had not done crying in both senses but for the interest of watching an amiable Bob Brierley who, with his arm about the waist of the person sitting next to him, kept looking round at the rest of the world from time to time with the innocence of one whose left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing.

"But we had hardly crossed the bar when the prince of the powers of the air began to envy the happiness of these dear young goodies, and if you had seen the weather for the next four hours you would have agreed that the devil must have had a hand in it! Up came a wave over the after quarter and down went the passengers below decks, staggering and screaming like brewery rats, and then on we came like the Israelites out of Egypt on eagles' wings! Having lost my own sea legs a little I thought it prudent to go down too, with my doggie tucked under my arm, and finding a berth in the ladies' cabin, I fell asleep and didn't awake until we were in the cross-current just off the island, when, amid moans and groans and other noises, I heard the tearful voice of a sick passenger asking, 'Is there any hope, stewardess?'

"The train got to Peel as the sun was setting behind the grim old castle walls, and when I saw the dear little town again I dropped half a tear, and even felt an insane desire to run out to meet it. Grandfather was at the station with old 'Caesar' and the pony carriage, and when I had done kissing him and he had done panting and puffing and talking nonsense, as if I had been Queen Victoria and the Empress of the French rolled into one, I could have cried to see how small and feeble he had become since I went away. We could not get off immediately, for in his simple joy at my return he was hailing everybody and everybody was hailing him, and the dear old Pharisee was sounding his trumpet so often in the market-place, that he might have glory of men, that I thought we should never get up to Glenfaba that night. When we did so at length the old aunties were waiting at the gate, and then he broke into exclamations again. 'Hasn't she grown tall? Look at her! Hasn't she, now?' Whereupon the aunties took up their parable with, 'Well, well! Aw, well! Aw, well now! Well, ye navar!' So that by the time I got through I had kissed everybody a dozen times, and was as red over the eyes as a grouse.

"Then we went into the house, and for the first five minutes I couldn't tell what had come over the old place to make it look so small and mean. It was just as if the walls of the rooms had been the bellows of a concertina and somebody had suddenly shut them. But there was the long clock clucking away on the landing, and there was Sir Thomas Traddles purring on the hearth-rug, and there were the same plates on the dresser, and the same map of Africa over the fireplace, with a spot of red ink where my father died.

"The moon was glistening on the sea when I went to bed that night, and when I got up in the morning the sun was shining on it, and a crow cut across my window cawing, and I heard grandfather humming to himself on the path below. And after my long spell in London, and my railway journey of the day before, it was the same as if I had fallen asleep in a gale on the high seas and awakened in a quiet harbour somewhere.

"So here I am, back at Glenfaba, in my old little room with my old little bed, and everything exactly as it used to be; and I begin to believe that when you went into that monastery you only just got the start of me in being dead. There used to be a few people in this place, but now there doesn't seem to be a dog left. All the youngsters have 'gone foreign,' and all the oldsters have gone to—'goodness knows which.' Sometimes we hear the bleat of sheep on the mountains, and sometimes the scream of seagulls overhead, and sometimes we hold a convocation of all living rooks in the elms on the lawn. We take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat or what we shall put on, and on Sundays when the church bell rings we go out, like the Israelites in the wilderness, in clothes which wax not old after forty years. During the rest of the week we watch the blue-bottles knocking their stupid heads against the ceiling, and listen to the grasshoppers whispering in the grass, and fall asleep to the hum of the bees, and awake to the hee-haw of old Neilus's 'canary.' [* Donkey] Such is the dead-alive life we live at Glenfaba, and the days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if.... Ohoy! (A yawn.)

"I suppose it is basely ungrateful of me to talk like this, for the dear place itself is lovely enough to disturb one's hope of paradise, and this very morning is as fresh as the dew on the grass, with the larks singing above, and the river singing below, and clouds like little curls of foam hovering over the sea. And as for my three dear old dunces, who love me so much more than I deserve, I am ashamed in my soul when I overhear them planning good things for me to eat, and wild excitements for me to revel in, that I may not be dull or miss the luxuries I am accustomed to. 'Do you know I'm afraid Glory doesn't care so much for pinjane after all,' I heard grandfather whispering to Aunt Anna one morning, and half an hour afterward he was reproving Aunt Rachel for pressing me too hard to serve at the soup kitchen.

"They govern me like a child in pinafores, and of course like a child I revenge myself by governing all the house. But, oh, dear! oh, dear! gone are the days when I could live on water-gruel and be happy in a go-cart. Yes, the change is in me, not in them or the old home, and what's the good of putting back the clock when the sun is so stubbornly keeping pace? I might be happy enough at Glenfaba still, if I could only bring back the days when the garden trees were my gymnasium and I used to rock myself and sing like a bird on a bough in the wind, or when I led a band of boys to rob our own orchard—a bold deed, for which Bishop Anna ofttimes launched at me and! all her suffragans her severest censure—it was her slipper, I remember. But I can't run barefoot all day long on the wet sand now, with the salt spray blowing in my face, and a young lady of one-and-twenty seldom or never rushes out to play dumps and baggy-mug in public with little girls of ten.

"As a result, my former adventures are now limited to careering on the back of little 'Caesar,' who has grown so ancient and fat that he waddles like an old duck, and riding him is like working your passage. So I confine myself to sitting on committees, and being sometimes sat upon, and rubbing the runes for grandfather, and cleaning the milkpails for Aunt Anna, and even such holy kill-times as going to church regularly and watching Neilus when he is passing round the plate after 'Let your light so shine before men'—light to his practical intellect being clearly a synonym for silver in the shape of threepenny bits!

"But, oh my! oh my! I am a dark character in this place for all that The dear old goodies have never yet said a syllable about my letter announcing that I had gone over to the enemy (i. e., Satan and the music hall), and there is a dead hush in the house as often as the wind of conversation veers in that direction. This is nothing, though, to the white awe in the air when visitors call and I am questioned how I earn my living in London. I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the long-drawn breath of relief when I wriggle out of a tight place without telling a lie. But you can't hide an eel in a sack, and I know the truth will pop out one of these days. Only yesterday I went district-visiting with Aunt Rachel, and one of the Balaams of life, who keeps a tavern for fishermen, lured us into his bar parlour to look at a portrait of 'Gloria' which he had cut out of an illustrated paper and pinned up on the wall 'because it resembled me so much!' Oh, dear! oh, dear! I could have found it in my heart to brazen it out on the spot at this sight of my evil fame; but when I saw poor little auntie watching me with fearful eyes I talked away like a mill-wheel and went out thanking God that the rest of the people of Peel were not as other men are, or even as this publican.

"I have been getting newspapers myself, though, sent by my friend Rosa; and as long as the mis-reporters concerned themselves with my own doings and failures to do, and lied as tenderly as an epitaph about my disappearance from London, I cut them up and burned them. But when they forgot me, and began to treat of other people's triumphs, I made Neilus my waste-paper basket, on the understanding that the papers were to go to the fishermen just home from Kinsale. Then from time to time he told me they were 'goin' round, miss, goin' round,' and gave me other assurances of 'the greatest circulation in the world,' which was true enough certainly, though the old thief omitted to say it was at the paper-mill, where they were being turned into pulp.

"But, heigho! I don't need newspapers to remind me of London. Like St. Paul, I have a devil that beats me with fists, and as often as a clear day comes, and one can see things a long way off, he makes me climb to the top of Slieu Whallin [* A mountain in Man.] that I may sit on the beacon by the hour and strain my eyes for a glimpse of England, feeling like Lot's wife when she looked back on her old home, and then coming down with a heavy heart and a taste of tears in my mouth as if I had been turned into a pillar of salt. Dear old London! But I suppose it is going on its way just as it used to do, with its tides of traffic and its crowds and carriages, and wandering merchants and hawkers crying their wares, and everything the same as ever, just the same, although Glory isn't there!

* * * * *

"10.30 P. M.—I had to interrupt the writing of my letter this morning owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking nonsense to him all day and playing chess with him all the evening I have to put him to bed laughing, and come back to my own room to finish my letter with an easier mind. For the last half-hour the aurora has been pulsing in the northern sky, and I have been thinking that the glorious phantasmagoria must be the sign of a gale in heaven, just as sleet and mist and black wind are the signs of a gale on earth. But it has tripped off into nothingness and only the dark night is left, through which the dogs at Knockaloe are keeping up their private correspondence with the dogs at Ballamoar by the medium of their nightly howls.

"Oh, dear! Only 10.30! And to know that while we are going to bed by country hours, with nearly everything still and dead around us, London is just beginning to bestir itself! When I lie down and try to sleep I shall see the wide squares, with their statues of somebody inside, and the blaze of lights over the doors of the theatres, and all the tingling life of the great and wonderful city. Ugh! It makes one feel like one's own ghost wandering through the upper rooms and across the dark landings, and hearing the strains of the music and the sounds of the dancing from the ballroom below stairs!

"But, my goodness! (I can still swear on that, you see, and not be forsworn!) 'What's the odds if you're jolly?—and I allus is!' How's your dog? Mine would write you a letter, only her heart is moribund, and if things go on as they are going she must set about making her will. In fact, she is now lying at the foot of my bed thinking matters out, and bids me tell you that after various attempts to escape Home Rule, not being (like her mistress) one of those natures made perfect through suffering, she is only 'kept alive by the force of her own volition,' in this house that is full of old maids and has nothing better in it than one old cat, and he isn't worth hunting, being destitute of a tail. Naturally she is doing her best (like somebody else) to keep herself unspotted from that world which is a source of so much temptation, but she's bound to confess that a little 'divilment' now and then would help her to take a more holy and religious view of life.

"I 'wish you happy' in your new enterprise; but if you are going in for being the champion of woman in this world—of her wrongs—I warn you not to be too pointed in your moral, for there is a story here of a handsome young curate who was so particular in the pulpit with 'Lovest thou me' that a lady followed him into the vestry and admitted that she did. Soberly, it is a great and noble effort, and I've half a mind to love you for it. If men want women to be good they will be good, for women dance to the tune that men like best, and always have done so since the days of Adam—not forgetting that gentleman's temptation, nor yet his excuse about 'the woman Thou gavest me,' which shows he wasn't much of a husband anyway, though certainly he hadn't much choice of a wife.

"My love to dear old London! Sometimes I have half a mind to skip off and do my wooing myself. Perhaps I should do so, only that Rosa writes that she would like to come and spend her summer holiday in Peel. Haven't I told you about Rosa? She's the lady journalist that Mr. Drake introduced me to.

"But let's to bed, Said Sleepyhead.

"Glory.

"P.S.—IMPORTANT. Ever since I left London I have been tormented with the recollection of poor Polly's baby. She put him out to nurse with the Mrs. Jupe you heard of, and that person put him out to somebody else. While the mother lived I had no business to interfere, but I can't help thinking of the motherless mite now and wondering what has become of him. I suppose that like Jeshurun he waxeth fat and kicketh by this time, yet it would be the act of a man and a clergyman if anybody would take up my neglected duty and make it his business to see that there is somebody to love the poor child. Mrs. Jupe's address is 5a, The Little Turnstile, going from Holborn into Lincoln's Inn Fields."



VIII.

It was on a Saturday morning that John Storm received Glory's letter, and on the evening of the same day he set out in search of Mrs. Jupe's. The place was not easy to find, and when he discovered it at length he felt a pang at the thought that Glory herself had lived in this dingy burrowing. As he was going up to the door of the little tobacco shop a raucous voice within was saying, "That's what's doo on the byeby, and till you can py up you needn't be a-kemmin' 'ere no more." At the next moment a young woman crossed him on the threshold. She was a little slender thing, looking like a flower that has been broken by the wet. He recognised her as the girl who had nursed the baby in Cook Lane on the day of his first visit to Soho. She was crying, and to hide her swollen eyes she dropped her head at passing, and he saw her faded ribbons and soiled straw hat.

A woman of middle age behind the counter was curtsying to his clerical attire, and a little girl at the door of an inner room was looking at him out of the corner of her eyes, with head aslant.

"Father Storm, I think, sir. Come in and set you down, sir.—Mind the shop, Booboo.—My 'usband 'as told me about ye, sir. 'You'll know 'im at onct, Lidjer,' 'e sez, siz 'e.—No, 'e ain't 'ome from the club yet, but 'e might be a-kemmin' in any time now, sir."

John Storm had seated himself in the little dark parlour, and was looking round and thinking of Glory. "No matter; my business is with you, Mrs. Jupe," he answered, and at that the twinkling eyes and fat cheeks, which had been doing their best to smile, took on a look of fear.

"Wot's the metter?" she asked, and she closed the door to the shop.

"Nothing, I trust, my good woman," and then he explained his errand.

Mrs. Jupe listened attentively and seemed to be asking herself who had sent him.

"The poor young mother is dead now, as you may know, and——"

"But the father ain't," said the woman sharply, "and, begging your parding, sir, if 'e wants ter know where the byeby is 'e can come 'isself and not send sembody else!"

"If the child is well, my good woman, and well cared for——"

"It is well keered for, and it's gorn to a pusson I can trust."

"Then what have you got to conceal? Tell me where it is, and——"

"Not me! If it's 'is child, and 'e wants it, let 'im py for it, and interest ep ter dite. Them swells is too fond of gettin' parsons to pull their chestnuts out o' the fire."

"If you suppose I am here in the interests of the father, you are mistaken, I do assure you."

"Ow, you do, do yer?"

Matters had reached this pass when the door opened and Mr. Jupe came in. Off went his hat with a respectful salutation, but seeing the cloud on his wife's face, he abridged his greeting. The woman's apron was at her eyes in an instant.

"Wot's gowin' on?" he asked. John Storm tried to explain, but the woman contented herself with crying.

"Well, it's like this, don'cher see, Father. My missis is that fond of childring, and it brikes 'er 'eart——"

Was the man a fool or a hypocrite?

"Mr. Jupe," said John, rising, "I'm afraid your wife has been carrying on an improper and illegal business."

"Now stou thet, sir," said the man, wagging his head. "I respects the Reverend Jawn Storm a good deal, but I respects Mrs. Lidjer Jupe a good deal more, and when it comes to improper and illegal bizniss——"

"Down't mind 'im, 'Enery," said the wife, now weeping audibly.

"And down't you tyke on so, Lidjer," said the husband, and they looked as if they were about to embrace.

John Storm could stand no more. Going down the court he was thinking with a pang of Glory—that she had lived months in the atmosphere of that impostor—when somebody touched his arm in the darkness. It was the girl. She was still crying.

"I reckerlec' seeing you in Crook Lane, sir, the day we christened my byeby, and I waited, thinking p'raps you could help me."

"Come this way," said John, and walking by his side along the blank wall of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the girl told her story. She lived in one room of the clergy-house at the back of his church. Having to earn her living, she had answered an advertisement in a Sunday paper, and Mrs. Jupe had taken her baby to nurse. It was true she had given up all claim to the child, but she could not help going to see it—the little one's ways were so engaging. Then she found that Mrs. Jupe had let it out to somebody else. Only for her "friend" she might never have heard of it again. He had found it by accident at a house in Westminster. It was a fearful place, where men went for gambling. The man who kept it had just been released from eighteen months' imprisonment, and the wife had taken to nursing while the husband was in prison. She was a frightful woman, and he was a shocking man, and "they knocked the children about cruel." The neighbours heard screams and slaps and moans, and they were always crying "Shame!" She had wanted to take her own baby away, but the woman would not give it up because there were three weeks' board owing, and she could not pay.

"Could you take me to this house, my child?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then come round to the church after service to-morrow night."

The girl's tearful face glistened like April sunshine.

"And will you help me to get my little girl? Oh, how good you are! Everybody is saying what a Father it is that's come to——" She stopped, then said quite soberly: "I'll get somebody to lend me a shawl to bring 'er 'ome in. People say they pawn everything, and perhaps the beautiful white perlice I bought for 'er ... Oh, I'll never let 'er out of my sight again, never!"

"What is your name, my girl?"

"Agatha Jones," the girl answered.

It was nearly eleven o'clock on Sunday night before they were ready to start on their errand. Meantime Aggie had done two turns at the foreign clubs, and John Storm had led a procession through Crown Street and been hit by a missile thrown by a "Skeleton," whom he declined to give in charge. At the corner of the alley he stopped to ask Mrs. Pincher to wait up for him, and the girl's large eyes caught sight of the patch of plaster above his temple.

"Are you sure you want to go, sir?" she said.

"There's no time to lose," he answered. The bloodhound was with him; he had sent home for it since the attempted riot.

As they walked toward Westminster she told him where she had been, and what money she had earned. It was ten shillings, and that would buy so many things for baby.

"To-morrow I'll get a cot for her—one of those wicker ones; iron is so expensive. She'll want a pair o' socks too, and by-and-bye she'll 'ave to be shortened."

John Storm was thinking of Glory. He seemed to be retreading the steps of her life in London. The dog kept close at his heels.

"She'll 'a bin a month away now, a month to-morrow. I wonder if she's grow'd much—I wonder! It's wrong of people letting their childring go away from them. I'll never go out at nights again—not if I 'ave to tyke in sewin' for the slop shops. See this?" laughing nervously and showing a shawl that hung on her arm. "It's to bring 'er 'ome in—the nights is so chill for a byeby."

John's heart was heavy at sight of these little preparations, but the young mother's face was radiant.

As they went by the Abbey, under its forest of scaffolding, and, walking toward Millbank, dipped into the slums, that lie in the shadow of the dark prison, they passed soldiers from the neighbouring barracks going arm-in-arm with girls, and this made Aggie talk of her "friend," and cry a little, saying it was a week since she had seen him, and she was afraid he must have 'listed. She knew he was rude to people sometimes, and she asked pardon for him, but he wasn't such a bad boy, after all, and he never knocked you about except when he was drinking.

The house they were going to was in Angel Court, and having its door only to the front, it was partly sheltered from observation. A group of women with their aprons over their heads stood talking in whispers at the corner. One of them recognised Aggie and asked if she had got her child yet, whereupon John stopped and made some inquiries. The goings-on at the house were scandalous. The men who went to it were the lowest of the low, and there was scarcely one of them who hadn't "done time." The man's name was Sharkey, and his wife was as bad as he was. She insured the children at seven pounds apiece, and "Lawd love ye, sir, at that price the poor things is worth more dead nor alive!"

Aggie's face was becoming white, and she was touching John Storm's elbow as if pleading with him to come away, but he asked further questions. Yes, there were several children. A twelve-months' baby, a boy, was fretful with his teething, and on Sunday nights, when the woman was wanted downstairs, she just put the poor darling to bed and locked the room. If you lived next door, you could hear his crying through the wall.

"Agatha," said John, as they stepped up to the door, "get us both into this house as best you can, then leave the rest to me.—Don, lie close!"

Aggie tapped at the door. A little slide in it was run back and a voice said, "Who's there?"

"Aggie," the girl answered.

"Who's that with you?"

"A friend of Charlie's," and then the door was opened.

John crossed the threshold first, the dog followed him, the girl entered last. When the door had closed behind them, the doorkeeper, a young man holding a candle in his hand, was staring at John with his whole face open.

"Hush! Not a word!—Don, watch that man!"

The young man looked at the dog and turned pale.

"Where is Mrs. Sharkey?"

"Downstairs, sir."

There were sounds of men's voices from below, and from above there came the convulsive sobs of a child, deadened as by a door between.

"Give me your candle."

The man gave it.

"Don't speak or stir, or else——"

John glanced at the dog, and the man trembled.

"Come upstairs, child," and the girl followed him to the upper floor.

On reaching the room in which the baby was crying they tried the door. It was locked. John attempted to force it, but it would not yield. The child's sobs were dying down to a sleepy moan.

Another room stood open and they went in. It was the living-room. A kettle on the fire was singing and puffing steam. There was no sign of a key anywhere. Only a table, some chairs, a disordered sofa, certain sporting newspapers lying about, and a few pictures on the walls. Some of the pictures were of race-horses, but all the rest were memorial cards, and one bore the text, "He shall gather them in his arms." Aggie was shuddering as with cold, being chilled by some unknown fear.

"We must go down to the cellar—there's no help for it," said John.

The man in the hall had not spoken or stirred. He was still gazing in terror on the bloodshot eyes looking out of the darkness. John gave the candle to the girl and began to go noiselessly downstairs. There was not a movement in the house now. Big Ben was striking. It was twelve o'clock.

At the next moment John Storm was midway down, and had full view of the den. It was a washing cellar with a coal vault going out of it under the street. Some fifteen or twenty men, chiefly foreigners, were gathered about a large table covered with green baize, on which a small lamp was burning. A few of the men were seated on chairs ranged about, the others were standing at the back in rows two deep. They were gambling. The game was faro. Rows of lucifer matches were laid on the table, half-crowns were staked on them, and cards were cut and dealt. Except the banker, a middle-aged man with the wild eye of the hard spirit-drinker, everybody had his face turned away from the cellar stairs.

They did not smoke or drink, and they only spoke to each other when the stakes were being received or paid. Then they quarrelled and swore in English. After that there was a chilling and hideous silence, as if something awful were about to occur. The lamp cast a strong light on the table, but the rest of the room was darkened by patches of shadow.

The coal vault had been turned into a drinking-bar, and behind the counter there was a well-stocked stillage. In the depths of its shade a woman sat knitting. She had a gross red and white face, and in the arch above her was the iron grid in the pavement. Somebody on the street walked over it, causing a hollow sound as of soil falling on a coffin.

John Storm was no coward, but a certain tremor passed over him on finding himself in this subterranean lurking-place of men who were as beasts. He stood a full minute unseen. Then he heard the woman say in a low hiss, "Cat's mee-e-et!" and he knew he had been observed. The men turned and looked at him, not suddenly, or all at once, but furtively, cautiously, slowly. The banker crouched at the table with an astonished face and tried to smuggle the cards out of sight.

John stood calmly, his whole figure displaying courage and confidence. The group of men broke up. "He's got the 'coppers,'" said one. Nobody else spoke, and they began to melt away. They disappeared through a door at the back which led into a yard, for, like rats, the human vermin always have a second way out of their holes.

In half a minute the cellar was nearly empty. Only the banker and the woman and one young man remained. The young man was Charlie.

"What cheer, myte?" he said with an air of unconcern. "Is it trecks ye want, sir? Here ye are then," and he threw a pack of cards at John's feet.

"It's that gel o' yawn that's done this," said the woman.

"So it's a got-up thing, is it?" said Charlie, and stepping to the counter, he took up a drinking-glass, broke it at the rim; and holding its jagged edges outward, turned to use it as a weapon.

John Storm had not yet spoken, but a magnetic instinct warned him. He whistled, and the dog bounded down. The young man threw his broken glass on the floor and cried to the keeper of the house: "Don't stir, you! First you know, the beast will be at yer throat!"

Hearing Charlie's voice, Aggie was creeping down the stairs. "Charlie!" she cried. Charlie threw open his coat, stuck his fingers in the armholes of his waistcoat, said in a voice of hatred, passion, and rage, "Go and pawn yourself!" and then swaggered out at the back door. The keeper made show of following, but John Storm called on him to stop. The man looked at the dog and obeyed. "Wot d'ye want o' me?" he said.

"I want this girl's baby. That's the first thing I want. I'll tell you the rest afterward."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" The man's grimace was frightful.

"It's gone, sir. We've lost it," said the woman, with a hideous expression.

"That story will not pass with me, my good woman. Go upstairs and unlock the door! You too, my man, go on!"

A minute later they were in a bedroom above. Three neglected children lay asleep on bundles of rags. One of twelve months' old was in a wicker cradle, one of three years was in a wooden cot, and a younger child was in a bed. Aggie had come up behind, and stood by the door trembling and weeping.

"Now, my girl, find your baby," said John, and the young mother hurried with eager eyes from the cradle to the cot and from the cot to the bed.

"Yes, here it is," she cried. "No—oh no, no!" and she began to wring her hands.

"Told yer so," said the woman, and with a wicked grin she pointed to a memorial card which hung on the wall.

Aggie's child was dead and buried. Diarrhoea! The doctor at the dispensary had given a certificate of death, and Charlie had shared the insurance money. "Wish to Christ it was ended!" he had said. He had been drunk ever since.

The poor girl was stunned. She was no longer crying. "Oh, oh, oh! What shall I do?" she said.

"Who's child is this?" said John, standing over the wicker cradle. The little sufferer from inflamed gums had sobbed itself to sleep.

"A real laidy's," said the woman. "Mrs. Jupe told us to tyke great kear of it. The father is Lord something."

"My poor girl," said John, turning to Aggie, "could you carry this child home for me?"

"Oh, oh, oh!" said the girl, but she wrapped the shawl about the child and lifted it up sleeping.

"Now, you down't!" said the man, putting himself on guard before the door. "That child is worth 'undrids of pounds to me, and——"

"Stand back, you brute!" said John, and with the girl and her burden he passed out of the house.

The front door stood open and the neighbourhood had been raised. Trollopy women in their under-petticoats and with their hair hanging about their necks were gathered at the end of the court. Aggie was crying again, and John pushed through the crowd without speaking.

They went back by Broad Sanctuary, where a solitary policeman was pacing to and fro on the echoing pavement. Big Ben was chiming the half-hour after midnight. The child coughed like a sheep constantly, and Aggie kept saying, "Oh, oh, oh!"

Mrs. Pincher, in her widow's cap and white apron, was waiting up for them, and John committed the child to her keeping. Then he said to Aggie, who was turning away, "My poor child, you have suffered deeply, but if you will leave this man I will help you to begin life again, and if you want money I will find it."

"Well, he is a Father and no mistake!" said Mrs. Pincher; but the girl only answered in a hopeless voice, "I don't want no money, and I don't want to begin life again."

As she crossed the court to her room in the tenement house they heard her "Oh, oh, oh!"

* * * * *

Before going to bed that night John Storm wrote to Glory:

"Hurrah! Have got poor Polly's baby, so you may set your heart at ease about it. All the days of my life I have been thought to be a dreamer, but it is surprising what a man can do when he sets to work for somebody else! Your former landlady turns out to be the wife of my 'organ man,' and it was pitiful to see the dear old simpleton's devotion to his bogus little baggage. I have lost him, of course, but that was unavoidable.

"It was by help of another victim that I traced the child at last. She is a ballet girl of some sort, and it was as much as I could stand to see the poor young thing carrying Polly's baby, her own being dead and buried without a word said to her. Short of the grace of God she will go to the bad now. Oh, when will the world see that in dealing with the starved hearts of these poor fallen creatures God Almighty knows best how to do his own business? Keep the child with the mother, foster the maternal instinct, and you build up the best womanhood. Drag them apart, and the child goes to the dogs and the mother to the devil.

"But Polly's baby is safely lodged with Mrs. Pincher, a dear old grandmotherly soul who will love it like her own, and all the way home I have been making up my mind to start baby-farming myself on fresh lines. He who wrongs the child commits a crime against the State. However low a woman has fallen, she is a subject of the Crown, and if she is a mother she is the Crown's creditor. These are my first principles, the application will come anon. Meantime you have given me a new career, a glorious mission! Thank God and Glory Quayle for it for ever and ever! Then—who knows?—perhaps you will come back and take it up yourself some day. When I think of the precious time I spent, in that monastery ... but no, only for that I should not be here.

"Oh, life is wonderful! But I feel afraid that I shall wake up—perhaps in the streets somewhere—and find I have been dreaming. Deeply grieved to hear of the grandfather's attack. Trust it has passed. But if not, certain I am that all is well with him and that he is staid only on God.

"Hope you are well and plodding through this wilderness in comfort, avoiding the thorns as well as you can. Glenfaba may be dull, but you do well to keep out of the whirlpool of London for the present. Yours is a snug spot, and when storms are blowing even the sea-gulls shelter about your house, I remember ... But why Rosa? Is Peel the only place for a summer holiday?"



IX.

"Glenfaba.

"Oh, my dear John Storm, is it coals of fire you are heaping on my head, or fire of brimstone? Your last letter with its torrents of enthusiasm came sweeping down on me like a flood. What work you are in the midst of! What a life! What a purpose! While I—I am lying here like an old slipper thrown up oil the sea-beach. Oh, the pity oft, the pity oft! It must be glorious to be in the rush and swirl of all this splendid effort, whatever comes of it! One's soul is thrilled, one's heart expands! As for me, the garden of my mind is withering, and I am consuming the seed I ought to sow.

"Rosa has come. She has been here a month nearly, and is just charming, say what you will. Her thoughts have the dash of the great world, and I love to hear her talk. True, she troubles me sometimes, but that's only my envy and malice and all uncharitableness. When she tells of Betty-this and Ellen-that, and their wonderful successes and triumphs, I'm the meanest sinner that crawls.

"It's funny to see how the old folk bear themselves toward her. Aunt Rachel regards her as a sort of an artist, and is clearly afraid that she will break out into madness in spots somewhere. Aunt Anna disapproves of her hair, which is brushed up like a man's, and of her skirt, which 'would be no worse if it were less like a pair of breeches,' for she has brought her 'bike.' She talks on dangerous subjects also, and nobody did such things in auntie's young days. Then she addresses the old girlies as I do, and calls grandfather 'G-rand-dad,' and like the witch of Endor generally, is possessed of a familiar spirit. Of course I give her various warning looks from time to time lest the fat should be in the fire, but she's a woman, bless her! and it's as true as ever it was that a woman can keep the secret she doesn't know.

"Yes, the ideal of womanhood has changed since the old aunties were young; but when I listen to Rosa and then look over at Rachel with her black ringlets, and at Anna with her old-fashioned 'front,' I shudder and ask myself, 'Why do I struggle?' What is the reward if one gives up the fascination of life and the world? There is no reward. Nothing but solitary old-maidism, unless two of you happen to be sisters, for who else will join her shame to yours? Dreams, dreams, only dreams of the dearest thing that ever comes into a woman's arms—and then you awake and there is no one there. A dame's school, when the old father is gone, but no children of your own to love you, nobody to think of you, scraping a little here, pinching a little there, growing older and smaller year by year, looking yellow and craned like an apple that has been kept on the top shelf too long, and then—the end!

"Oh, but I'm trying so hard, so very hard, to be 'true to the higher self in me,' because somebody says I must. What do you think I did last week? In my character of Lady Bountiful I gave an old folks' supper in the soup kitchen, understood to be in honour of my return. Roast beef and plum duff, not to speak of pipes and 'baccy, and forty old people of both sexes sitting down to 'the do.' After supper there was a concert, when Chaise (the fat old thief!) overflowed the 'elber' chair, and alluded to me as 'our beautiful donor,' and lured me into singing Mylecharaine, and leading the company, when we closed with the doxology.

"But 'it was not myself at all, Molly dear, 'twas my shadow on the wall,' and in any case man can't live by soup kitchens alone—nor woman either. And knowing what a poor, weak, vain woman I am at the best, I ask myself sometimes would it not be a thousand times better if I yielded to my true nature instead of struggling to realize a bloodless ideal that is not me in the least, but only my picture in the heart of some one who thinks me so much better than I am?

"Not that anybody ever sees what a hypocrite I can be, though I came near to letting the cat out of the bag as lately as last night. You must know that when I turned my back on London at the command of John Knox the second, I brought all my beautiful dresses along with me, except such of them as were left at the theatre. Yet I daren't lay them out in the drawers, so I kept them under lock and key in my boxes. There they lurked like evil spirits in ambush, and as often as their perfume escaped into the room my eyes watered for another sight of them! But in spite of all temptation I resisted, I conquered, I triumphed—until last night when Rosa talked of Juliet, what a glorious creature she was, and how there was nobody on the stage who could 'look' her and 'play' her too!

"What do you think I did? Shall I tell you? Yes, I will. I crept upstairs to my quiet little room, tugged the box from its hiding-place under the bed, drew out my dresses—my lovely, lovely brocades—and put them on! Then I spoke the potion speech, beginning in a whisper, but getting louder as I went on, and always looking at myself in the glass. I had blown out the candle, and there was no light in the room but the moon that was shining on my face, but I was glowing, my very soul was afire, and when I came to the end I drew myself up with eyes closed and head thrown back and heart that paused a beat or two, and said, 'I—I am Juliet, for I am a great actress!'

"Oh, oh, oh! I could scream with laughter to think of what happened next! Suddenly I became aware of somebody knocking at my door (I had locked it) and of a thin voice outside saying fretfully: 'Glory, whatever is it? Aren't you well, Glory?' It was the little auntie; and thinking what a shock she would have if I opened the door and she came upon this grand Italian lady instead of poor little me, I had to laugh and to make excuses while I smuggled off my gorgeous things and got back into my plain ones!

"It was a narrow squeak; but I had a narrower one some days before. Poor grandfather! He regards Rosa as belonging to a superior race, and loves to ask her what she thinks of Glory. He has grown quite simple lately, and as soon as he thinks my back is turned he is always saying, 'And what is your opinion of my granddaughter, Miss Macquarrie?' To which she answers, 'Glory is going to make your name immortal, Mr. Quayle.' Then his eyes sparkle and he says, 'Do you think so?—do you really think so?' Whereupon she talks further balderdash, and the dear old darling smiles a triumphant smile!

"But I always notice that not long afterward his eyes look wet and his head hangs low, and he is saying to the aunties, with a crack in his voice: 'She'll go away again. You'll see she will. Her beauty and her talents belong to the world.' And then I burst in on them and scold them, and tell them not to talk nonsense.

"Nevertheless he is beginning to regard Rosa with suspicion, as if she were a witch luring me away, and one evening last week we had to steal into the garden to talk that we might escape from his watchful eyes. The sun had set—there was the red glow behind the castle across the sky and the sea, and we were walking on the low path by the river under the fuchsia hedge that hangs over from the lawn, you know. Rosa was talking with her impetuous dash of the great career open to any one who could win the world in London, how there were people enough to help her on, rich men to find her opportunities, and even to take theatres for her if need be. And I was hesitating and halting and stammering: 'Yes, yes, if it were the regular stage ... who knows? ... perhaps it might not be opened to the same objections, ...' when suddenly the leaves of the fuchsia rustled as with a gust of wind, and we heard footsteps on the path above.

"It was the grandfather, who had come out on Rachel's arm and overheard what I had said! 'It's Glory!' he faltered, and then I heard him take his snuff and blow his nose as if to cover his confusion, thinking I was deceiving them and carrying on a secret intercourse. I hardly know what happened next, except that for the five minutes following 'the great actress' had to talk with the tongues of men and angels (Beelzebub's) in order to throw dust in the dear old eyes and drive away their doubts. It was a magnificent performance, 'you go bail.' I'll never do the like of it again, though I had only one old man and one old maid and one young woman for audience. The house 'rose' at me too, and the poor old grandfather was appeased. But when we were back indoors I overheard him saying: 'After all there's no help for it. She's dull with us—what wonder! We can't cage our linnet, Rachel, and perhaps we shouldn't try. A song-bird came to cheer us, but it will fly away. We are only old folks, dear—it's no use crying.' And on going to his room that night he closed his door and said his prayers in a whisper, that I might not hear him when he sobbed.

"He hasn't left his bed since. I fear he never will More than once I have been on the point of telling him there is no reason to think the deluge would come if I did, go back to London; but I will never leave him now. Yet I wish Aunt Rachel wouldn't talk so much of the days when I went away before. It seems that every night, on his way to his own room, he used to step into my empty one and come out with his eyes dim and his lips moving. I am not naturally hard-hearted, but I can't love grandfather like that. Oh, the cruelty of life! ... I know it ought to be the other way about; ... but I can't help it.

"All the same I could cry to think how short life is, and how little of it I can spare. 'Cling fast to me and hold me,' my heart is always saying, but meantime London is calling to me, calling to me, like the sea, and I feel as if I were a wandering mermaid and she were my ocean home.

* * * * *

"Later.—Poor, poor grandfather! I was interrupted in the writing of my letter this morning by another of those sudden alarms. He had fainted again, and it is extraordinary how helpless the aunties are in a case of illness. Grandfather knows it too; and after I had done all I could to bring him round, he opened his eyes and whispered that he had something to say to me alone. At that the poor old things left the room with tears of woe and a look of understanding. Then fetching a difficult breath he said, 'You are not afraid, Glory, are you?' and I answered him 'No,' though my heart was trembling. And then a feeble smile struggled through the wan features of his drawn face, and he told me his attack was only another summons. 'I'll soon die for good,' he said, 'and you must be strong and brave, my child, for death is the common lot, and then what is there to fear?' I didn't try to contradict him—what was the good of doing that? And after he had spoken of the coming time he talked quietly of his past life, how he had weathered the storm for seventy odd years, and his Almighty Father was bringing him into harbour at last. 'I can't pray for life any longer, Glory. Many a time I did so in the old days when I had to bring up my little granddaughter, but my task is over now, and after the day is done where is the tired labourer who does not lie down to his rest with a will?'

"The doctor has been and gone. There is no ailment, and nothing to be done or hoped. It is only a general failure and a sinking earthward of the poor worn-out body as the soul rises to the heaven that is waiting to receive it. What a pagan I feel beside him! And how glad I am that I didn't talk of leaving him again when he was on the eve of his far longer journey! I have sent the aunties to bed, but Rosa has made me promise to awaken her at four, that she may take her turn at his bedside.

* * * * *

"Next Morning.—Rosa relieved me during the night, and I came to my room and lay down in the dullness of the dawn. But now I am sorry that I allowed her to do so, for I did not sleep, and grandfather appears to have been troubled with dreams. I fancied he shuddered a little as I left them together, and more than once through the wall I heard him cry, 'Bring him back!' in the toneless voice of one who is labouring under the terrors of a nightmare. But each time I heard Rosa comforting him, so I lay down again without going in.

"Being stronger this morning, he has been propped up in bed writing a letter. When he called for the pens and paper I asked if I couldn't write it for him, but the old darling made a great mystery of the matter, and looked artful, and asked if it was usual to fight your enemy with his own powder and shot. Of course I humoured him and pretended to be mighty curious, though I think I know who the letter was written to, all the same that he kept the address side of the envelope hidden even when the front of it was being sealed. He sealed it with sealing-wax, and I held the candle while he did so, with his poor trembling fingers in danger from the light, and then I stamped it with my mother's pearl ring, and he smuggled it under the pillow.

"Since breakfast he has shown an increased inclination to doze, but there have been visits from the wardens and from neighbouring parsons, for a locum tenens has had to be appointed. Of course, they have all inquired where his pain is, and on being told that he has none, they have gone downstairs cackling and clucking and crowing in various versions of 'Praise God for that!' I hate people who are always singing the doxology.

* * * * *

"Noon.—Condition unchanged, except that in the intervals of drowsiness his mind has wandered a little. He appears to live in the past. Looking at me with conscious eyes, he calls me 'Lancelot'—my father's name. It has been so all the morning. One would think he was walking in a twilight land where he mistakes people's faces and the dead are as much alive as the living.

"They all think I am brave, oh, so brave! because I do not cry now, as everybody else does—even Aunt Anna behind her apron—although my tears can flow so easily, and at other times I keep them constantly on tap. But I am really afraid, and down at the bottom of my heart I am terrified. It is just as if something were coming into the house slowly, irresistibly, awfully, and casting its shadow on the floor already.

"I have found out the cause of his outcries in the night. Aunt Rachel says he was dreaming of my father's departure for Africa. That was twenty-two years ago, but it seems that the memory of the last day has troubled him a good deal lately. 'Don't you remember it?' he has been saying. 'There were no railways in the island then, and we stood at the gate to watch the coach that was taking him away. He sat on the top and waved his red handkerchief. And when he had gone, and it was no use watching, we turned back to the house—you and Anna and poor, pretty young Elise. He never came back, and when Glory goes again she'll never come back either.'

"In the intervals of his semi-consciousness, when he mistakes me for my father, my wonderful bravery often fails me, and I find excuses for going out of the room. Then I creep noiselessly through the house and listen at half-open doors. Just now I heard him talking quite rationally to Rachel, but in a voice that seemed to speak inwardly, not outwardly, as before. 'She can't help it, poor child!' he said. 'Some day she'll know what it is, but not yet, not until she has a child of her own. The race looks forward, not backward. God knew when he created us that the world couldn't go on without that bit of cruelty, and who am I that I should complain?'

"I couldn't bear it any longer, and with a pain at my heart I ran in and cried, 'I'll never leave you, grandfather.' But he only smiled and said, 'I'll not be keeping you long, Glory, I'll not be keeping you long,' and then I could have died for shame.

* * * * *

"Evening.—All afternoon he has been like a child, and everything present to his consciousness seems to have been reversed. The shadow of eternity appears to have wiped out time. When I have raised him up in bed he has delighted to think he was a little boy in his young mother's arms. Oh, sweet dream! The old man with his furrowed forehead and beautiful white head and all the heavy years rolled back! More than once he has asked me if he may play till bedtime, and I have stroked his wrinkled hands and told him 'Yes,' for I pretend to be his mother, who died, when she was old.

"But the 'part' is almost too much for me, and, lest I should break down under the strain of it, I am going out of his room constantly. I have just been into his study. It is as full as ever of his squeezes and rubbings and plaster casts and dusty old runes. He has spent all his life away back in the tenth century, and now he is going farther, farther....

"Oh, I'm aweary, aweary! If anything happens to grandfather I shall soon leave this place; there will be nothing to hold me here any longer, and besides I could not bear the sight of these evidences of his gentle presence, so simple, so touching. But what a vain thing London is with all its vast ado—how little, how pitiful!

* * * * *

"Later.—It is all over! The curtain has fallen, and I am not crying. If I did cry it would not be from grief, but because the end was so beautiful, so glorious! It was at sunset, and the streamers of the sun were coming horizontally into the room. He awoke from a long drowsiness, and a serenity almost angelic overspread his face. I could see that he was himself once again. Death had led him back through the long years since he was a child, and he knew he was an old man and I a young woman. 'Have the boats gone yet?' he asked, meaning the herring boats that go at sunset. I looked out and told him they were at the point of going. 'Let me see them sail,' he said, so I slipped my arms about him and raised him until he was sitting up and could see down the length of the harbour and past the castle to the sea. The reflection of the sunlight was about his silvery old head, and over the damps and chills of death it made a radiance on his face like a light from heaven. There was hardly a breeze, and the boats were dropping down from their berths with their brown sails half set. 'Ah,' he said, 'it's the other way with me, Glory. I'm coming in, not going out. I've been beating to windward all my life, but I see the harbour on my lee-bow at last as plainly as I ever saw Peel, and now I'm only waiting for the top of the tide and the master of the port to run up the flag!'

"Then his head fell gently back on my arm and his lips changed colour, but his eyes did not close, and over his saintly face there passed a fleeting smile. Thus died a Christian gentleman—a simple, sunny, merry, happy, childlike creature, and of such are the kingdom of heaven.

"Glory."

* * * * *

Parson Quayle's Letter.

"Dear John: Before this letter reaches you, or perhaps along with it, you will receive the news that tells you what it is. I am 'in,' John; I can say no more than that. The doctor tells me it may be now or then or at any time. But I am looking for my enlargement soon, and whether it comes to-morrow sunset or with to-day's next tide I leave myself in His hands in whose hands we all are. Well has the wise man said, 'The day of our death is better than the day of our birth, so with all good will, and what legacy of strength old age has left to me, I send you my last word and message.

"My poor old daughters are sorely stricken, but Glory is still brave and true, being, as she always was, a quivering bow of steel. People tell me that the poor mother is strong in the girl, and the spirit of the mother's race; but well I know the father's stalwart soul supports her; and I pray God that when my dark hour comes her loving and courageous arms may be around me.

"That brings me to the object of my letter. This living will soon be vacant, and I am wondering who will follow in my feeble steps. It is a sweet spot, John! The old church does not look so ill when the sun shines on it, and in the summer-time this old garden is full of fruit and flowers. Did I ever tell you that Glory was born here? I never had another grandchild, and we were great comrades from the first. She was a wise and winsome little thing, and I was only an old child myself, so we had many a run and romp in these grounds together. When I try to think of the place without her it is a vain effort and a painful one; and even while she was away in your great and wicked Babylon, with its dangers and temptations, her little ghost seemed to lurk at the back of every bush and tree, and sometimes it would leap out on me and laugh.

"It is months since I saw your father, but they tell me he has lately burned his bureau, making one vast bonfire of the gatherings of twenty years. That is not such ill news either; and maybe, now the great ado that worked such woe is put by and gone, he would rejoice to see you back at home, and open his hungering arms to you.

"But my eyes ache and my pen is shaking. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell! An old man leaves you his blessing, John. God grant that in his own good time we may meet in a blessed paradise, rejoicing in his gracious mercy, and all our sins forgiven!

"Adam Quayle."



X.

Glory's letter and its inclosure fell on John Storm like rain in the face of a man on horseback—he only whipped up and went faster.

"How can I find words," he wrote, "to express what I feel at your mournful news? Yet why mournful? His life's mission was fulfilled, his death was a peaceful victory, and we ought to rejoice that he was so easily released. I trust you will not mourn too heavily for him, or allow his death to stop your life. It would not be right. No trouble came near his stainless heart, no shadow of sin; his old age was a peaceful day which lasted until sunset. He was a creature that had no falsetto in a single fibre of his being, no shadow of affectation. He kept like this through all our complicated existence in this artificial world, absolutely unconscious of the hollowness and pretension and sham that surrounded him—tolerant, too, and kind to all. Then why mourn for him? He is gathered in—he is safe.

"His letter was touching in its artful simplicity. It was intended to ask me to apply for his living. But my duty is here, and London must make the best of me. Yet more than ever now I feel my responsibility with regard to yourself. The time is not ripe to advise you. I am on the eve of a great effort. Many things have to be tried, many things attempted. It is a gathering of manna—a little every day. To God's keeping and protection meantime I commit you. Comfort your aunts, and let me know if there is anything that can be done for them."

The ink of this letter was hardly dry when John Storm was in the middle of something else. He was in a continual fever now. Above all, his great scheme for the rescue and redemption of women and children possessed him. He called it Glory's scheme when he talked of it to himself. It might be in the teeth of nineteenth-century morality, but what matter about that? It was on the lines of Christ's teaching when he forgave the woman and shamed the hypocrites. He would borrow for it, beg for it, and there might be conditions under which he would steal for it too.

Mrs. Callender shook her head.

"I much misdoubt there'll be scandal, laddie. It's a woman's work, I'm thinking."

"'Be thou as chaste as ice,' auntie, 'as pure as snow' ... but no matter! I intend to call out the full power of a united Church into the warfare against this high wickedness. Talk of the union of Christendom! If we are in earnest about it we'll unite to protect and liberate our women."

"But where's the siller to come frae, laddie?"

"Anywhere—everywhere! Besides, I have a bank I can always draw on, auntie."

"You're no meaning the Prime Minister again, surely?"

"I mean the King of Kings. God will provide for me, in this, as in everything."

Thus his reckless enthusiasm bore down everything, and at the back of all his thoughts was the thought of Glory. He was preparing a way for her; she was coming back to a great career, a glorious mission; her bright soul would shine like a star; she would see that he had been right, and faithful, and then—then——But it was like wine coursing through his veins—he could not think of it.

Three thousand pounds had to be found to buy or build homes with, and he set out to beg for the money. His first call was at Mrs. Macrae's. Going up to the house, he met the lady's poodle in a fawn-coloured wrap coming out in charge of a footman for its daily walk round the square.

He gave the name of "Father Storm," and after some minutes of waiting he was told that the lady had a headache and was not receiving that day.

"Say the nephew of the Prime Minister wishes to see her," said John.

Before the footman had returned again there was the gentle rustle of a dress on the stairs, and the lady herself was saying: "Dear Mr. Storm, come up. My servants are real tiresome, they are always confusing names."

Time had told on her; she was looking elderly, and the wrinkles about her eyes could no longer be smoothed out. But her "front" was curled, and she was still saturated in perfume.

"I heard of your return, dear Mr. Storm," she said, in the languid voice of the great lady, but the accent of St. Louis, as she led the way to the drawing-room. "My daughter told me about it. She was always interested in your work, you know.... Oh, yes, quite well, and having a real good time in Paris. Of course, you know she has been married. A great loss to me naturally, but being God's will I felt it was my duty as a mother——" and then a pathetic description of her maternal sentiments, consoled by the circumstance that her son-in-law belonged to "one of the best families," and that she was constantly getting newspapers from "the other side" containing full accounts of the wedding and of the dresses that were worn at it.

John twirled his hat in his hand and listened.

"And what are your dear devoted people doing down there in Soho?"

Then John told of his work for working girls, and the great lady pretended to be deeply interested. "Why, they'll soon be better than the upper classes," she said.

John thought it was not improbable, but he went on to tell of his scheme, and how small was the sum required for its execution.

"Only three thousand! That ought to be easily fixed up. Why, certainly!"

"Charity is the salt of riches, madam, and if rich people would remember that their wealth is a trust——"

"I do—I always do. 'Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth'—what a beautiful text that is!"

"I'm glad to hear you say so, madam. So many Christian people allow that God is the God of the widow and fatherless, while the gods they really worship are the gods of silver and gold."

"But I love the dear children, and I like to go to the institution to see them in their nice white pinafores making their curtsies. But what you say is real true, Mr. Storm; and since I came from Sent Louis I've seen considerable people who are that silly about cats——" and then a long story of the folly of a lady friend who once had a pet Persian, but it died, and she wore crape for it, and you could never mention a cat in her hearing afterward.

At that moment the poodle came back from its walk, and the lady called it to her, fondled it affectionately, said it was a present from her poor dear husband, and launched into an account of her anxieties respecting it, being delicate and liable to colds, notwithstanding the trousseau (it was a lady poodle) which the fashionable dog tailor in Regent Street had provided for it.

John got up to take his leave. "May I then count on your kind support on behalf of our poor women and children of Soho?"

"Ah, of course, that matter—well, you see the Archdeacon kindly comes to talk 'City' with me—in fact, I'm expecting him to-day—and I never do anything without asking his advice, never, in my present state of health—I have a weak heart, you know," with her head aside and her saturated pocket-handkerchief at her nose. "But has the Prime Minister done anything?"

"He has advanced me two thousand pounds."

"Really?" rising and kicking back her train. "Well, as I say, we ought to fix it right away. Why not hold a meeting in my drawing-room? All denominations, you say? I don't mind—not in a cause like that," and she glanced round her room as if thinking it was always possible to disinfect it afterward.

Somebody was coughing loudly in the hall as John stepped downstairs. It was the Archdeacon coming in. "Ah," he exclaimed, with a flourish of the hand, greeting John as if they had parted yesterday and on the best of terms. Yes, there had been changes, and he was promoted to a sphere of higher usefulness. True, his good friends had looked for something still higher, but it was the premier archdeaconry at all events, and in the Church, as in life generally, the spirit of compromise ruled everything. He asked what John was doing, and on being told he said, with a somewhat more worldly air, "Be careful, my dear Storm, don't encourage vice. For my part, I am tired of the 'fallen sister.' To tell you the truth, I deny the name. The painted Jezebel of the Piccadilly pavement is no sister of mine."

"We don't choose our relations, Archdeacon," said John. "If God is our Father, then all men are our brothers, and all women are our sisters whether we like it or not."

"Ah! The same man still, I see. But we will not quarrel about words. Seen the dear Prime Minister lately? Not very lately? Ah, well"—with a superior smile—"the air of Downing Street—it's so bad for the memory, they say," and coughing loudly again, he stepped upstairs.

John Storm went home that day light-handed but with a heavy heart.

"Begging is an ill trade on a fast day, laddie," said Mrs. Callender. "Sit you down and tak' some dinner."

"How dare these people pray, 'Our Father which art in heaven?' It's blasphemy! It's deceit!"

"Aye, and they would deceive God about their dividends if he couldn't see into their safes."

"Their money is the meanest thing Heaven gives them. If I asked them for their health or their happiness, Lord God, what would they say?"

On the Sunday night following John Storm preached to an overflowing congregation from the text, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."

But a few weeks afterward his face was bright and his voice was cheery, and he was writing another letter to Glory:

"In full swing at last, Glory. To carry out my new idea I had to get three thousand pounds more of my mother's money from my uncle. He gave it up cheerfully, only saying he was curious to see what approach to the Christian ideal the situation of civilization permitted. But Mrs. Callender is dour, and every time I spend sixpence of my own money on the Church she utters withering sarcasms about being only a 'daft auld woman hersel',' and then I have to caress and coax her.

"The newspapers were facetious about my 'Baby Houses' until they scented the Prime Minister at the back of them, and now they call them the 'Storm Shelters,' and christen my nightly processions 'The White-cross Army.' Even the Archdeacon has begun to tell the world how he 'took an interest' in me from the first and gave me my title. I met him again the other day at a rich woman's house, where we had only one little spar, and yesterday he wrote urging me to 'organize my great effort,' and have a public dinner in honour of its inauguration. I did not think God's work could be well done by people dining in herds and drinking bottles of champagne, but I showed no malice. In fact, I agreed to hold a meeting in the lady's drawing-room, to which clergymen, laymen, and members of all denominations are being invited, for this is a cause that rises above all differences of dogma, and I intend to try what can be done toward a union of Christendom on a social basis. Mrs. Callender is dour on that subject too, reminding me that where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered together. The Archdeacon thinks we must have the meeting before the twelfth of August, or not until after the middle of September, and Mrs. Callender understands this to mean that 'the Holy Ghost always goes to sleep in the grouse season.'

"Meantime my Girls' Club goes like a forest fire. We are in our renovated clergy-house at last, and have everything comfortable. Two hundred members already, chiefly dressmakers and tailors, and girls out of the jam and match factories. The bright, merry young things, rejoicing in their brief blossoming time between girlhood and womanhood. I love to be among them and to look at their glistening eyes! Mrs. Callender blows withering blasts on this head also, saying it is no place for a 'laddie,' whereupon I lie low and think much but say nothing.

"Our great night is Sunday night after service. Yes, indeed, Sunday! That's just when the devil's houses are all open round about us, and why should God's house be shut up? It is all very well for the people who have only one Sabbath in the week to keep it wholly holy—I have seven, being a follower of Jesus, not of Moses. But the rector of the parish has begun to complain of my 'intrusion,' and to tell the Bishop I ought to be 'mended or ended.' It seems that my 'doings' are 'indecent and unnecessary,' and my sermons are 'a violation of all the sanctities, all the modesties of existence.' Poor dumb dog, teaching the Gospel of Don't! The world has never been reformed by 'resignation' to the evils of life, or converted by 'silence' either.

"How I wish you were here, in the midst of it all! And—who knows?—perhaps you will be some day yet. Do not trouble to answer this—I will write again soon, and may then have something practical to say to you. Au revoir!"



XI.

On the day of the drawing-room meeting a large company gathered in the hall at Belgrave Square. Lady Robert Ure, back from the honeymoon, received the guests for her mother, whose weak heart and a headache kept her upstairs. Her husband stood aside, chewing the end of his mustache and looking through his eyeglass with a gleam of amused interest in his glittering eye. There were many ladies, all fashionably dressed, and one of them wore a seagull's wing in her hat, with part of the root left visible and painted red to show that it had been torn out of the living bird. The men were nearly all clergymen, and the cut of their cloth and the fashions of their ties indicated the various complexions of their creeds. They glanced at each other with looks of embarrassment, and Mrs. Callender, who came in like a breeze off a Scottish moor, said audibly that she had never seen "sae many craws on one tree before." The Archdeacon was there with his head up, talking loudly to Lady Robert. She stood motionless in her place, never turning her head toward John Storm, though it was plain that she was looking at him constantly. More than once he caught an expression of pain in her face, and felt pity for her as one of the brides who had acted the lie of marrying without love. But his spirits were high. He welcomed everybody, and even bantered Mrs. Callender when she told him she "objected to the hale thing," and said, "Weel, weel, wait a wee."

The Archdeacon gave the signal and led the way with Lady Robert to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Macrae, redolent of perfume, was reclining on a sofa with the "lady poodle" by her side. As soon as the company were seated the Archdeacon rose and coughed loudly.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "we have no assurance of a blessing except 'Ask and ye shall receive.' Therefore, before we go further, it is our duty, as brethren of a common family in Christ, to ask the blessing of Almighty God on this enterprise."

There was a subdued rustle of drooping hats and bonnets, when suddenly a thin voice was heard to say, "Mr. Archdeacon, may I inquire first who is to ask the blessing?"

"I thought of doing so myself," said the Archdeacon with a meek smile.

"In that case, as a Unitarian, I must object to an invocation in which I do not believe."

There was a half-suppressed titter from the wall at the back, where Lord Robert Ure was standing with his face screwed up to his eyeglass.

"Well, if the name of our Lord is a stumbling block to our Unitarian, brother, no doubt the prayer in this instance would be acceptable without the customary Christian benediction."

"That's just like you," said a large man near the door, with whiskers all round his face. "You've been trimming all your life, and now you are going to trim away the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

"If our Low-Church brother thinks he can do better——"

But John Storm intervened. He had looked icy cold, though the twitching of his lower lip showed that he was red hot within.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said in a quavering voice, "I apologize for bringing you together. I thought if we were in earnest about the union of Christendom we might at least unite in the real contest with evil. But I find it is a dream; we have only been trifling with ourselves, and there is not one of us who wants the union of Christendom, except on the condition that his rod shall be like Aaron's rod which swallowed up all the rest. It was a mistake, and I beg your pardon."

"Yes, sir," said the Archdeacon, "it was a mistake; and if you had taken my advice from the first, and asked the blessing of God through good High Churchmen alone——"

"God doesn't wait for any asking," said John, now flushing up to the eyes. "He gives freely to High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, and No Churchmen alike."

"If that is your opinion, sir, you are no better than some of your friends, and for my part I will never darken your door again!"

"Darken is a good word for it, Archdeacon," said John, and with that the company broke up.

Mrs. Macrae looked like a thunder-cloud as John bowed to her on passing out, but Mrs. Callender cried out in a jubilant voice, "Be skipper of your ain ship, laddie!" and added (being two yards behind the Archdeacon's broad back going down the stairs), "If some folks are to be inheritors of the kingdom of heaven there'll be a michty crush at the pearly gates, I'm thinking!"

John Storm went back to Soho with a heavy heart. Going up Victoria Street he passed a crowd of ragged people who were ploughing their way through the carriages. Two constables were taking a man and woman to the police court in Rochester Row. The prisoners were Sharkey, the keeper of the gambling house, and his wife the baby-farmer.

But within a week John Storm, in greater spirits than ever, was writing to Glory again:

"The Archdeacon has deserted me, but no matter! My uncle has advanced me another thousand of my mother's money, so the crusade is self-supporting in one sense at all events. What a fool I am! Ask Aunt Anna her opinion of me, or say old Chalse or the village natural—but never mind! Folly and wisdom are relative terms, and I don't envy the world its narrow ideas of either. You would be amused to see how the women of the West End are taking up the movement—Lady Robert Ure among the rest! They have banded themselves into a Sisterhood, and christened our clergy-house a 'Settlement.' One of my Greek owners came in the other evening to see the alterations. His eyes glistened at the change, and he asked leave to bring a friend. I trust you are well and settling things comfortably, and that Miss Macquarrie has gone. It is raining through a colander here, but I have no time to think of depressing weather. Sometimes when I cross our great squares, where the birds sing among the yellowing leaves, my mind goes off to your sweet home in the sunshine; and when I drop into the dark alleys and lanes, where the pale-faced children play in their poverty and rags, I think of a day that is coming, and, God willing, is now so near, when a ministering angel of tenderness and strength will he passing through them like a gleam. But I am more than ever sure that you do well to avoid for the present the pompous joys of life in London, where for one happy being there are a thousand pretenders to happiness."

On the Sunday night following, Crook Lane, outside the clergy-house, was almost blocked with noisy people of both sexes. They were a detachment of the "Skeletons," and the talk among them was of the trial of the Sharkeys, which had taken place the day before. "They've 'ed six menths," said one. "And it's all along o' minjee parsons," said another; and Charlie Wilkes, who had a certain reputation for humour, did a step-dance and sang some doggerel beginning—

Father Storm is a werry good man, 'E does you all the 'arm 'e can.

Through this crowd two gentlemen pushed their way to the clergy-house, which was brilliantly lit up. One of them was the Greek owner, the other was Lord Robert Ure. Entering a large room on the ground floor, they first came upon John Storm, in cassock and biretta, standing at the door and shaking hands with everybody who came in and went out. He betrayed no surprise, but greeted them respectfully and then passed them on. Every moment of his time was occupied. The room was full of the young girls of the district, with here and there a Sister out of another world entirely. Some were reading, some conversing, some laughing, some playing a piano, and some singing. Their voices filled the air like the chirping of birds, and their faces were bright and happy. "Good-evening, Father," they said on entering, and "Good-night, Father," as they went away.