The Devil's Garden

In this manner the full and happy years began to glide past them. Their prosperity was now firmly established; the business grew; and money came in so nicely that Mrs. Dale's mortgage had been paid off and her two thousand pounds invested in gilt-edged securities, while Dale hoped very shortly to discharge the remainder of his obligation to Mr. Bates. They were, however, as economical as ever in their own way of life, although they permitted themselves some license in the generosity they had begun to practise with regard to their less fortunate neighbors. But they found, as so many have found before them, that in personal charity a little money goes a long way, and that the claims of the very poor, although sometimes noisy, are rarely excessive. Naturally they had to be careful for the sake of their children, the security of whose future must be the first consideration. Dale had promised the baby boy in his cradle "the advantages of a lib'ral education," and he intended to act up to this promise largely.

"It is my wish," he said, "that the two of them shall enjoy all that I was myself deprived of."

He confessed to Mavis that the sweetest thing in his success was the feeling of being no longer disliked.

"Oh, Will, you never were disliked."

"Ah," said Mavis, "that's the sort of difficult reading that you like. It's too deep for me."

"It's plain as the nose on one's face, come to think of it. Sympathy is the key-note. It enables you to look at things from both sides—to put yourself in another man's place, and ask yourself the question, What should I be thinking and doing, if I was him?—I should say if I was he. In the old days I was very deficient in that. A fool just made me angry. Now I try to put myself in his place." He paused, and smiled. "Perhaps you'll say I'm there already—a fool myself."

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that;" and Mavis smiled too. "Not quite a fool, Will."

He went on analyzing his characteristics, talking with great interest in the subject, and after a didactic style, but not with the heavy egoistic method that he had often employed years ago.

"No, I never remarked that."

"You know," he said presently, "in spite of all my bounce, I was a shy man.

And he wound up his discourse by returning to the original cause of satisfaction.

"Yes, I do think there are some now that like me for myself—not many, but just one or two, besides dear old Mr. Bates."

"Everybody does. Why, look at that child, Norah. Only been here a month, and worships the ground you tread on."

"Poor little mite. That's her notion of being grateful for what I did for her father. Does she eat just the same?"

"Ravenous."

"Don't stint her," said Dale, impressively. "Feed her ad lib. Give her all she'll swallow. It's the leeway she's got to make up;" and he turned his eyes toward the kitchen door. "Is she out there?"

"Yes."

"I spoke loud. You don't think she heard what I said?"

"Oh, no. She's busy with Mrs. Goudie."

"I wouldn't like for her to hear us discussing her victuals as though she was an animal."

"You might have thought she was verily an animal," said Mavis, "if you'd seen her at the first meals we set before her. And even now it brings a lump into my throat to watch her."

"Just so."

Dale got up from the table, his face glowing redly, his brows frowning; and he stretched his arms to their full length.

"By Jupiter!" he said thickly, "if only Mrs. Neath had been a man, I'd 'a' given him—well, at the least, I'd 'a' given him a piece of my mind. I'd have told him what I thought of him."

"I promise you," said Mavis, "that I told Mrs. Neath what I thought of her."

"An' I'm right glad you did."

The horrid, lying, carneying old woman of the cottage received home truths instead of tea and sugar from Mavis Dale, who, with all her maternal feelings aroused, rushed off straightway to hunt for the neglectful father. She found him at the Barradine Arms, and demanded his permission to take away the child. Veale, although sadly bemused, at once said that he could refuse nothing to the wife of his preserver.

"Oh, lor-a-mussy, yes, mum, you may 'aave my little Norrer an' do what you like wi' her. Bless her heart, I look on Norrer and her brothers to be the comfort o' my old age, but I wunt stan' in their light to interfere wi' what's best for any of 'em."

Mavis then took Norah straight home with her to Vine-Pits, bathed her, fed her, clothed her, and made much of her. And Norah proved grateful, docile, amenable, doing all that Mrs. Dale told her to do; and from the first exhibiting an almost superstitious worship of Mr. Dale. For truly, as he himself had surmised, her little starved breast was overflowing with gratitude to the man who had saved her father. It mattered nothing to the children of the mud hovel that their father was not an exemplary character; they did not want him to be drowned; and Norah, hearing in extreme youth of the hero who had interposed between him and such a cruel death, had mentally built a pedestal for the hero and kept him on top of it ever since.

"Oh, certainly, Mr. Bates. You shall have it before the end of the week—and I hope you're going to act on the advice I ventured to offer last time; that is, put it in one of these Canadian Government guaranteed stocks."

"I'm sure it was good advice, William—even if I didn't act on it."

"Of course my orig'nal advice was what you ought to have acted on, Mr. Bates. That is to say, bought an annuity with your entire capital."

"Ah, William, I really couldn't do that;" and Mr. Bates turned away his eyes, as if unable to support Dale's friendly regard. "Apart from these annuities for old folk being rather a dog-in-the-manger trick, I—well, one has one's private difficulties, William. One is not always a free agent."

The demand for repayment, and with something of evasiveness or reticence in the old fellow's manner, greatly troubled Dale. Not at all from selfish motives; but because it confirmed a suspicion that he had long entertained. Although invisible locally, disgraced and hiding somewhere at a distance, that blackguardly son was probably still draining the good old man's resources.

These thoughts worried Dale. He really loved Mr. Bates, thoroughly appreciated the great dignity and sweetness of his nature, and felt it to be a monstrous and intolerable thing that the dear old chap at the age of seventy-three, instead of being allowed to end his days in a happy, seemly style, should be as if were bled to death by a conscienceless reprobate. But what could one do? It was like the cruelties of the woods that one regrets, but can not prevent—the rabbits chased by the weasels, the pheasants killed by the foxes, the thrushes destroyed by the hawks.

Dale also told Mrs. Goudie that Richard Bates had shown himself in the neighborhood, and asked her if the fact was generally known. He was aware that Mrs. Goudie had almost as much regard for the old man as he had himself.

"No, sir," said Mrs. Goudie, "I hadn't 'a' heard of it."

"Then that proves how close he kept. No doubt he came and went as surreptitiously as he could. Let it be between ourselves, Mrs. Goudie. Don't spread the tale an inch beyond us three."

"I will not, sir. But, oh, well-a-day, it's a bad bit o' news, sir. I did hope Mr. Bates was cured o' that runnin' sore."

She had been summoned from the kitchen just before leaving for the night; and with her shawl over her head, her wrinkled face working, and her bony hands clasped she stood near the table and waited for Mr. Dale to give the signal for her to withdraw.

"If you should see him, at any time, let me know, Mrs. Goudie."

"I will, sir."

"I might perhaps do good, if I could get hold of him on the quiet and address a few words to him."

"I wish you'd break his neck for him, yes, I do, indeed I do. I could tell you things as 'd make any one say hanging was too good for him."

The action of the Dales in regard to Norah Veale did not pass unnoticed. "They do tell me," said humble folk quite far afield, "that Mr. Dale up to Vine-Pits hev adapted little Norrer Veale same as if 'twas his own darter; and I sin her myself ridin' to her schoolin' in Mr. Dale's wagon. I allus held that Abe Veale was born a lucky one, fer nobody ever comes adapting my childer; an' how hey he kep' out o' jail all his days, if 'tisn't the luck?"

Nearer home, so striking an instance of kindness encouraged the cottagers to do more freely what already they were doing with considerable freedom: that is, to regard Vine-Pits Farm, and especially the parts of it presided over by Mrs. Dale, as the proper place to go in all moments of embarrassment or tribulation. Thus the flagged path by the walnut tree, the wooden bench beneath the window, and the open kitchen door, tended to become a sort of court where Mavis had to listen to an ever-increasing number of applicants.

Mrs. Goudie declared that Mavis was often imposed upon; and, although Mavis herself wished to give wisely rather than blindly, endeavoring to govern warm impulse with cold reason, certainly very few people went away from the Vine-Pits back door empty-handed.

The gentry, in their turn, learned the commonly accepted fact that Mr. and Mrs. Dale were charitably-minded as well as prosperous, and thought all the better of them, asked for subscriptions, and invited cooperation in various good works. So that their fame was always shining with a steadier brightness, and one might say that nowadays there appeared to be only a single objection occasionally hinted against this fortunate couple. Certain very old-fashioned people refrained from patronizing Dale's business or praising his private life, because of the regrettable and notorious circumstance that he never went to church.

If she carried either the first or the second intention into effect, it was Dale's custom to go along the road and meet her returning. And this he now prepared to do, on a warm dry April morning, when obviously there could be no fear of rain and she had set out in her best directly after breakfast.

When presently he went up-stairs to change his coat, he stood by a window and looked down at the peaceful little realm that fate had given to him. The sunlight was glittering on the red tiles of the clustered roofs, the brown thatch of the ricks, and the white cobblestones of a corner of the yard; and the blossom of pears and apples was pink and white, as if a light shower of colored snow had just fallen on the still leafless trees. Beneath the orchard branches he could see his children and Norah playing among the daffodils that grew wild in the grass; the light all about them was faintly blue and unceasingly tremulous and he stood watching, listening, smiling, thinking.

He observed the gracefulness and slimness of his daughter's stockinged legs, and thought what a real little man his son seemed already, so sturdy on his pins. In his blue overalls he looked like a miniature ploughman in a smock-frock. Dale laughed when Billy scampered away resolutely, and Norah had to run to catch him.

"Le' me go," roared Bill.

"Na, na," said Norah, "you mustn't go brevetin' about so far. Bide wi' sister and me, an' chain the daffies."

He put on his black coat, fetched out a pair of brown dogskin gloves, and then, failing to find the silk hat, came to the top of the staircase and shouted for Mary.

"My hat, Mary. Where in the name of reason is my hat?"

His shouts broke the Sunday silence, filled the house with noise, went rolling through the open windows in swift vibrations. Norah Veale under the blossoming apple tree caught up the cry as though she had been an echo, and ran with the children after her.

"Mary, the master's hat. Mary, Mary! Master wants his hat."

Then she appeared at the foot of the stairs, with an anxious excited face and speaking breathlessly.

"Mary can't leave th' Yorkshire pudden, sir; but she says she saw Mrs. Dale with th' hat in her hand after you wore it on Wednesday to Manninglea."

"Yes, but where is it now, Norah?"

"I do think Mrs. Dale must have put it in the cupboard under the stairs to get it safe out of Billy's way."

"Daddy," said Rachel, "I wis' you'd wear your helmet to-day."

"Oh, no, lassie, that wouldn't be seemly. This is more the thing for Sunday. Thank you, Norah." And having taken the silk hat, he laid his hand lightly on Norah's wavy black hair, and spoke to her very kindly. "Nothing like thought, Norah. I believe you've got a good little thinking-box under all this pretty hair, and you can't use it too much, my dear—specially so long as you're thinking about others."

Norah, with her blue eyes fixed on the venerated master's face, seemed to tremble joyously under the caress and the compliment. She and the children came out into the front garden and stood at the gate to watch Dale march away down the white road. He looked grandly stiff, black and large, in his ceremonious costume—a daddy and a master to be proud of.

Not a human being, not even the smallest sign of a man's habitation, was in sight; not a movement of bird or beast could be perceived in the stretching expanse of flat fields, across which huge cloud shadows passed slowly; the broad white road on either hand seemed to lead from nowhere to nowhere, and Dale, meditatively puffing out his tobacco smoke and watching it rise and vanish, had that sense of deep and almost solemn restfulness which comes whenever we realize that for any reason we are cut off from the possibility of communication with our kind. For a few moments he felt as a man feels all alone at the summit of a mountain, in the depths of an untrodden forest, on the limitless surface of a calm ocean. Yet, as he knew, there were men quite near to him. Across the road, not fifty yards away, the brick walls of the Baptist Chapel were hiding many men and women. Perhaps it was the complete isolation of this ugly building, the house of prayer pushed away into the desert far from all houses of laughter and talk, that had induced the idea of isolation in himself.

If he listened, he could hear sounds made by men. Through the chapel windows there came a continuous murmur, like the buzzing of a monster bee under the dome of a glass hive—the voice of the pastor preaching his sermon. Then all at once came loud music, shuffling of seats, scraping of chairs; and a voluminous song poured out and upward in the silent air. Dale idly thought of this chorus as resembling the smoke from the pipe—something that went up a little way and faded long before it reached the sky.

The road was empty again when the pastor came out and locked the chapel door behind him. He spoke to Dale with a gentle cheerfulness.

"Good day, friend Dale."

Dale, not too well pleased with this easy and familiar mode of address, replied stiffly.

"I wish you good day, Mr. Osborn."

"Good day. God's day. That's what it meant in the beginning, Mr. Dale."

He did not see Mavis approaching. She called to him from a distance, and he sprang off the gate and hurried to meet her. Instinctively, as he drew near, he looked into her face, searching for the expression that he had noticed just now in those other faces. It was not there. She was hot and red after her walk; her eyes were full of life and gaiety; she seemed a fine, broad-blown, well-dressed dame who might have been returning from market instead of from church, and her first words spoke of practical affairs.

"Holly Lodge is let again, Will, and Mr. Allen says the new gentleman keeps horses—because he's having the stables painted. You ought to send a circular at once, and make a call without delay."

Dale took his pipe out of his pocket, and spoke in an absent tone.

"I've been thinking what a rum world it is, Mav."

On the evening of the next Sunday Dale was quietly going out of the house when Mavis offered to accompany him.

"Off for a stroll, Will? If you can wait ten minutes, I'll come with you."

But he excused himself from waiting, and further confessed that he preferred to be alone. He said he was in a thoughtful rather than a talkative mood to-night.

"You understand, old girl?"

"Yes, dear, I understand. You want to put on your considering cap about something."

"That's just it, Mav. The considering cap. Ta-ta."

Outside in the roadway Mr. Creech, a farmer, hindered him for a few minutes. Between him and Mr. Creech there were certain business arrangements now under negotiation, and it was impossible to avoid speaking of them. Dale, however, cut their chat as short as possible, and directly he had shaken off Mr. Creech he walked away briskly toward Rodchurch.

He assumed a duly reverent attitude, not kneeling, but bending his body forward, and observed everything with great interest. There were many differences between the arrangements of this chapel and those of an ordinary church. The absence of an altar struck him as very remarkable. The large platform, with its balustrade and central perch, seemed to be altar, pulpit, and lectern all rolled into one—and choir too, since it was occupied by several men and a dozen girls and young women, who were all now on their knees while Mr. Osborn, looking very odd in purely civilian clothes, prayed loudly over their heads.

"Now," said Mr. Osborn, "let us praise God by singing the hundred and twenty-sixth hymn."

Then all the faces showed. It was like a flash of pallid light running to and fro along the benches as everybody changed the kneeling to the sitting posture; and Dale immediately felt that he had been placed in an uncomfortably conspicuous position. Far from being situated so that he could pry on the private affairs of others, he was where everybody could study him. He was alone, opposite to the entire crowd, instead of being comfortably absorbed in its mass.

"Oh, thank you. Much obliged."

Mr. Osborn, speaking from the pulpit, had said something to one of his young women, and she was leaning over the balustrade, smilingly offering Dale an open hymn-book.

"I am afraid," she said, "that it's very small print; but I dare say you have good eyes."

She spoke in the most friendly natural manner, exactly as one speaks to a visitor when one is anxious to make him feel welcome and at home. Dale, startled by this style of address in such a place, made a dignified bow.

To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.

They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and to nobody else.

Dale braced himself, squared his shoulders and stood more erect than ever as they struck into the third verse.

They sang louder than before: it seemed to him that they were screaming.

Dale closed the hymn-book, held it behind his back, and stared at the cross-beams of the roof until the hymn was over.

After the hymn Mr. Osborn read a couple of chapters from the Bible, and Dale, seated again, understood how utterly unfounded had been his recent notion that these people were devoting any particular attention to him. He looked at them carefully. Obviously they had not a thought of him. The eyes of those near to him and far from him were alike fixed upon the pastor's face.

"Now, I think," said Mr. Osborn, "it is fairly lighting-up time, and that no one can accuse us of being extravagant if we call for the match-boxes. Brother Maghull, please get to work. And, yes, you too, Brother Hartley, if you will. You're always a dab at regulating them."

Then the lamps were lighted; two or three men going round to do the work, the congregation generally assisting as much as they were able, while the pastor, watching all operations, made genial comments.

A ripple of gentle laughter, like a lightly dancing wave on a deep calm sea, passed from the platform to the outer door; the lamplighters went back to their seats; and the pastor with a change of voice said solemnly: "Friends, let us pray."

Dale observed his manner of holding his hand to his forehead as if seeking inspiration, the almost spasmodic movements of his mouth, the sort of plaintive groan that started the prayer, and the steadily accumulating earnestness with which it went on.

"O merciful and divine Father, supreme and omnipotent lord of Thy created universe, vouchsafe unto this little knot of Thy lowly creatures ..."

It was a long prayer; and Dale, surmising it to be an extempore composition, admired Mr. Osborn's flow of language, command of erudite words, and success in bringing some very intricate sentences to an appropriate period.

During the sermon Mr. Osborn several times aroused laughter by little homely jokes coming unexpectedly in the midst of his serious discourse; but Dale no longer felt surprise. He thought that he had caught their point of view, got the hang of the main scheme. These people were genuine believers, and entirely free from any affectation or pretense. They possessed no church-manner: thus, when they spoke to one another here, they did so as naturally as when they were speaking in the fields or on the highroads. Only when they spoke to God, could you hear the vibration and the thrill, the effort and the strain.

The lamplight enormously improved the appearance of the chapel; the genial yellow glow was surrounded by fine dark shadows that draped the ugly walls as if with soft curtains; there were golden glittering bands on the roof beams, and above them all had become black, impenetrable, mysterious. When one glanced up one might have had the night sky over one's head, for all one could see of the roof. The light shone bright on crooked backs, slightly distorted limbs, the pallor of sickness, the stains of rough weather; on girls meekly folding hands that daily scrub and scour; on laboring men stooping the shoulders that habitually carry weights; on spectacled old women with eyes worn out by incessantly peering at the tiny stitches of their untiring needles; but one would have looked in vain for any types even approximately similar to the stalwart well-balanced youths, the smooth-cheeked game-playing maidens, the prosperously healthful fathers and mothers of the established faith. Dale did not look for them, did not miss them, would not have wished them here.

"Friends, let us praise God by singing the hundred and tenth hymn before we separate."

They all rose and began to sing their final song; and Dale observed that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled to silence and prayer.

As so often happens toward the latter part of April, there had come a spell of unseasonably warm weather; thunder had been threatening for the last week, and now at the end of an oppressive day you could almost smell the electricity in the air.

Mavis warned Dale that he would get a sousing, when he told her that he was obliged to go as far as Rodchurch.

"Won't it do to-morrow, Will?"

"No, I shan't have time to-morrow. Remember I'm not made of barley-sugar. I shouldn't melt, you know, even if I hadn't got my mack."

Norah fetched him his foul weather hat, and ran for his umbrella.

"No," he said, "I don't want that, my dear;" and he smiled at her very kindly. "Besides, if we're going to have a storm, an umbrella is just the article to bring the lightning down on my head."

Norah pulled away the umbrella hastily, as though she would now have fought to the death rather than let him have it.

"Don't wait supper, Mav. I may be latish."

He took one glance toward the post office, and then went right down the street and out upon the common. The house that he was seeking stood a little way off the road, and a broad beam of light from an open window proved of assistance as he crossed the broken and uneven ground. While he groped for the bell handle inside the dark porch he could hear, close at hand, a purring and whirring sound of wheels that he recognized as the unmistakable noise made by a carpenter's lathe. As soon as he rang the bell the lathe stopped working, and next moment the Baptist pastor came to the door.

"Mr. Dale—is it not?

"Yes—good evening, Mr. Osborn."

"Pray come in."

"Thank you. Could you spare time for a chat?"

"Surely. I was expecting you."

Dale drew back, and spoke coldly, almost rudely.

"Indeed? I am not aware of any reason for your doing so."

"I ought to have said, hoping to see you."

"Oh. May I ask why?"

Mr. Osborn laughed contentedly. "Since I saw you at our service, you know. Please come into my room."

"There, take off your wraps and be seated, Mr. Dale. I'll sort my rubbish. Stuffy night, isn't it?"

Dale noticed that there was no bookcase, and he could not detect more than six books anywhere lying about. Perhaps there were some in the chiffonier. He would have expected to find quite a little library at a house tenanted by this sort of man.

"What do you think of that?" And Mr. Osborn handed him the small round box which he had been turning. "I amuse myself so. It's my hobby."

"You don't feel the want to read of an evening?"

"No, I'm not a book-worm. But one has to do something; so I took up this. If folk chaff me"—and Mr. Osborn smiled and nodded his head—"well, I tell them that infinitely better people than I have done carpentering in their time. Of course they don't always follow the allusion."

"Is there anything else I can tell you?"

"I am afraid of putting you out."

"Not in the least."

"Well, then, if you're sure I don't trespass—Mr. Osborn, the kind way you're receiving me makes me venturesome. I see an ash-tray over there, proving you sometimes favor the weed. Would you mind if I took a whiff of tobacco—a pipe?"

"Why, surely not."

"You won't join me?"

"No, thanks. But I'll tell you what I will do;" and Mr. Osborn emitted a chuckle. "I'll go on with my boxes, if you'll allow me."

"I should greatly prefer it."

"You know, I can listen just as well, while I'm fiddling away at my nonsense."

"I find," said Dale, as he filled his pipe, "that I rely on smoking more and more. Seems with me to steady the nerves and clear the brain. I know there are others that it just fuddles."

"Exactly."

Mr. Osborn had gone back to the lathe, and the pleasantly soothing whir of the wheels was heard again, while a fountain of the finest possible shavings began to spin in the air. For a few moments Dale watched him at his work. His gray hair flopped about queerly; he made rapid precise movements; and he talked as though he still had his eyes on one, although his back was turned.

"Thanks, Mr. Osborn."

He wore a loose blue flannel coat, and Dale wondered if this was a garment that he had bought years ago to play cricket in. Perhaps he had belonged to a University. It was quite clear that he must have had an extremely lib'ral education to start with. And Dale thought again what he had thought just now in the porch—that one ought to be precious careful in dealing with a man of such natural and acquired powers.

However, the fact that Mr. Osborn was continuing his work, and yet, as he had promised, at the same time listening properly, made the interview easier and Dale more comfortable. He recovered his self-confidence, and after puffing out a sufficient cloud of smoke, talked weightily and didactically.

"I am desirous not to exaggerate; but I would like to state that I was well impressed by my experience of your ritual—if that is the correct term. I seemed to find what I had not found elsewhere. If I may speak quite openly, I would say it appeared to me there wasn't an ounce of humbug in your service."

"Oh, I hope not."

"Now, in the event of a person wishing to become a member—in short, to embrace the Baptist faith entirely, there are one or two points that I'd like to have cleared up."

Then Dale asked a lot of questions; and the pastor, seeming to go on with the work, answered over his shoulder, or looking round for an instant only.

Dale heartily commended the Baptist custom. He said that much of his objection to religion had been caused by what he read of the Roman Catholic faith. As a responsible man he could never bring himself to that abject submission to another man, however you sanctified and tricked out the other man; besides, no one of mature age cares to make a complete confession of his past life. There must always be things that he could not force himself to disclose—follies, indiscretions, perhaps the grievous mistakes which he himself wants to forget, knowing that improvement lies in determination for better conduct, and not in brooding on past failure.

Mr. Osborn looked round, and used a gentle deprecating tone.

"You speak of your objection to religion; but, Mr. Dale, you are a singularly religious man. You are, really."

Mr. Osborn stopped work, looked round quickly, and his face was all bright and eager.

"No. But did you feel there was a special message to you in them?"

"I wouldn't put it quite like that," said Dale guardedly.

"Because it so often happens. It has happened again and again—to my own knowledge."

"You'll understand, Mr. Osborn, that I didn't take them as any way personal to myself—certainly not any way offensive; but it occurred to me that it might perhaps be the habit whenever a stranger dropped in to pick out hymns of strength, with a view to shaking him and warming him up, as it were."

The pastor resumed his work. "Those hymns were given out the day before—Saturday. Sister Eldridge had asked for one hundred and twenty-six; number six hundred and fifty-nine was, as far as I remember, also bespoken; and I chose number one hundred and ten myself—because it is a great favorite of mine. So you see, Mr. Dale, at the time we settled on those hymns, we did not know that you were coming—and perhaps you did not know it yourself."

"I did not know it," said Dale.

"Tell me," said Mr. Osborn, "how doubt has assailed you."

"You oughtn't to doubt, you know. You have what men prize—wife, children, and home. You thrive, and the world smiles on you."

"Yes, I'm more than solvent. I hope to leave Mrs. Dale and the babes secure."

"But you don't feel secure yourself?"

"I banked a matter of seven hundred last year."

"You know I didn't mean that." Mr. Osborn worked briskly, and sent the shavings almost to the ceiling. "But still—lots of men have told me that material prosperity renders faith easy and doubt difficult. That's the awful danger of trouble—the danger of thinking that God has deserted us. It's easiest to recognize His hand when all's going well with us. That's our poor human nature. And then when our sorrows come, it's the devil's innings, and he'll whisper: 'Where's God now? He isn't treating you very kindly, is He, in return for all your praying and kneeling and believing?'"

"Yes, that just hits the nail on the head. It was what I said—at a period when trouble fell upon me. It was how the doubt came in and the belief went out. And nowadays, when, as you mention, things run smooth and I know I've much to be thankful for, the doubt holds firm. For one thing prob'bly, I read a great deal; I've crammed my head with science; can't ever have enough of it. But, of course, I'm but an ignorant man compared with you."

"Oh, no."

"What's that?"

"That's Latin," said Dale. "Q. I. Bono."

"Oh, yes—exactly."

"Where's the good? Whatever one has, it isn't enough if this life is all we've got to look to and there's nothing beyond it."

Mr. Osborn had let the wheels run down. He came and sat opposite to Dale, and spoke very quietly.

"There is everything beyond it."

"And supposing that's so, one's difficulty begins bigger than before. It's the life-risk a million times larger all over again—success or failure, punishment or peace."

"That's better than what happened to the match you threw into the fender—extinction."

"I want to believe. Mr. Osborne, I wish to speak with honesty. I feel the need to believe. If you can make me believe, you'll do me a great service."

"The service will be done, but it won't be I who does it."

"I want to be saved. I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation."

"The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you."

Mr. Osborn got up to fetch one of the six shabby volumes, and when he had returned to his chair he went on talking.

"Yes, I wish to hear it."

"'God is Father; He is our Father. To Him'—speaking of Jesus—'and to us God is Father, and that means that we are in a deep and real sense His children, and, being children, then brothers to each other; for if God must be interpreted in terms of fatherhood, then man will never be interpreted accurately until he is interpreted in the terms of brotherhood.'" Mr. Osborn closed the book and laid his hand on Dale's knee. "How does that strike you, Brother Dale?"

"It strikes me as beautifully worded—Brother Osborn."

"That's how I want you to think of Him. A Father's love. Nothing strange nor new about it. Just what you used to be thinking as a boy, coming home to Father."

"I can't remember my father," said Dale simply. "He died when I was a baby, and mother married again. I only knew a stepfather."

The rain began as Dale walked up the village street, in which no light except that of the public lamps was now showing. It fell sharply as he emerged into the open country, and then abruptly ceased. The odor of dust that has been partially moistened rose from the roadway; some dead leaves scurried in the ditch with a sound of small animals running for shelter; and he felt a heavy, tepid air upon his face, as if some large invisible person was breathing on him.

Then the heavens opened, and a flood of light came pouring down. The thunder seemed simultaneous with the flash. It was a crashing roar that literally shook the ground. It was as if, without prelude or warning, every house in England had fallen, every gun fired, and every powder-magazine blown up. Dale stood still, trying to steady himself after the shock, and ascertaining that his eyes had not been blinded nor the drums of his ears broken.

Dale plodding along thought of all he had read about thunder-storms. It was quite true, what he said to Norah. Lightning strikes the highest object. That was why trees had got such a bad name for themselves; although, as a fact, you were often a jolly sight safer under a tree than out in the open. Salisbury Plain, he had read, was the most dangerous place in England; for the reason that, because of its bareness, it made a six-foot man as conspicuous, upstanding an object as a church tower or a factory chimney would be elsewhere. And he thought that if any cattle had been left out in those wide flat fields near the Baptist Chapel, they were now in great peril. Mav's cows were all safe under cover.

Then, stimulated by a new thought, he began to walk faster. He hurried on until he came to the middle of the flats; then, gropingly through the darkness, and swiftly through the light, he made his way to a gate that he had just seen standing high and solid between the low field banks. He climbed the gate, a leg on each side, to the top bar but one; and there, easily balancing himself, he stood high above every other object.

And he thought: "If I am to be killed, I shall be killed now. I stand here at God's pleasure, to take me or leave me."

He stood calmly surveying the tremendous pageant, and thought in each roar and crash: "This must be the climax."

That last flash had crimson streamers, and it swamped the road with violet waves. The fury and the splendor of the thing was overwhelming. Was it brought about by Nature's forces or God's machinery? Titanic—like a struggle between the divine and the evil power—some fresh rebellion of Satan just reported up there, and God, rightly indignant, giving the devil what for—or God angry with man! Very magnificent, whatever way you regarded it.

The worst was over, and gradually the storm began to roll away. Holding his hands high above his head, he felt the rain-drops beat upon them, saw the lightning soften and grow pale, heard the thunder booming more gently, grumbling, whispering—as if it had been the voice of the Maker of heaven and earth, murmuring in sleep.