Maugre, who had ignored the uproar and gone on reading, was taken aback by the man who re-entered the study, and thought he must have been murdering his wife: nothing else could account for such looks of calm and finality. Maugre too had read ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, and thought it passable, though somewhat old-fashioned, and too full of mortal violence. He had particularly disliked the Second-Sighted person who boasted he had ‘cut the Bodie of one of those People in two with his Iron Weapon’. This was going too far, even for a legend. No one fancies the thought of being cut in two like a wasp in the marmalade.

The Minister sat down at his desk, as usual. The pages he had been writing so impetuously not ten minutes since lay before him. He took them up and with great composure tore them in half. When the wall clock uttered the rasping grunt with which it prefaced striking the hour, he seized the heavy Bible which lay on the desk and hurled it at the clock with his whole force. It smashed the glass over the clockface and fell on the floor, where it lay gaping, its back broken, while bits of broken glass dropped more slowly after it. The clock struck. Deranged by the blow, the clock went on striking—the next hour, the hour following, the hours after that.

Margaret stood outside, counting the strokes. Midnight past and Wednesday begun: sixty-three. Wednesday noon: one hundred and forty-one. Wednesday midnight: two hundred and nineteen. Thursday midnight: three hundred and seventy-five. Friday midnight: five hundred and thirty-one. By Saturday morning the strokes began to lag. She had fastened her ambition on eleven o’clock of Saturday night, which would exceed the Number of the Beast by nine. At six hundred and fifty-eight it paused, but began again. Six hundred and sixty-two. It paused, choked, and struck. Six hundred and sixty-three. A much longer pause. Then, like the last drops of blood wrenched from a wound, there were two strokes, and no more. The Beast had won by a single stroke.

She felt lonely, and on an impulse she knocked on the door. There was no answer. She opened it, but did not cross the threshold. Her father was sitting at his desk. In a tranquil voice he said, ‘Go away, Margaret. I might kill you.’ Obediently, she went away. As she closed the door, Maugre slipped out. That night the Dissidents agreed that the noise, disorder, and dirt of the manse had exhausted their patience, and that they would leave on the next tolerably fine morning.