Suddenly, as he read, Mr. Gresley's face softened. He came to the illness and death of a child. It had been written long before Regie fell ill, but Mr. Gresley supposed it could only have been the result of what had happened a few weeks ago since the book was sent up to the publisher.

Two large tears fell on to the sheet. Hester's had been there before them. It was all true, every word. Here was no exaggeration, no fantastic overcoloring for the sake of effect.

"Ah, Hester!" he said, wiping his eyes. "If only the rest were like that. If you would only write like that."

A few pages more, and his eyes were like flint. The admirable clergyman who had attracted him from the first reappeared. His opinions were uncommonly well put. But gradually it dawned upon Mr. Gresley that the clergyman was toiling in very uncomfortable situations, in which he did not appear to advantage. Mr. Gresley did not see that the uncomfortable situations were the inevitable result of holding certain opinions, but he did see that "Hester was running down the clergy." Any fault found with the clergy was in Mr. Gresley's eyes an attack upon the Church, nay, upon religion itself. That a protest against a certain class of the clergy might be the result of a close observation of the causes that bring ecclesiastical Christianity into disrepute could find no admission to Mr. Gresley's mind. Yet a protest against the ignorance or inefficiency of some of our soldiers he would have seen without difficulty might be the outcome, not of hatred of the army, but of a realization of its vast national importance, and of a desire of its well-being.

Mr. Gresley was outraged. "She holds nothing sacred," he said, striking the book. "I told her after the Idyll, that I desired she would not mention the subject of religion in her next book, and this is worse than ever. She has entirely disregarded my expressed wishes. Everything she says has a sting in it. Look at this. It begins well, but it ends with a sneer."

"Christ lives. He wanders still in secret over the hills and the valleys of the soul, that little kingdom which should not be of this world, which knows not the things that belong unto its peace. And earlier or later there comes an hour when Christ is arraigned before the judgment bar in each individual soul. Once again the Church and the world combine to crush Him who stands silent in their midst, to condemn Him who has already condemned them. Together they raise their fierce cry, 'Crucify Him! Crucify Him!'"

Mr. Gresley tore the leaf out of the manuscript and threw it in the fire.

But worse remained behind. To add to its other sins, the book, now drawing to its close, took a turn which had been led up to inevitably step by step from the first chapter, but which, in its reader's eyes, who perceived none of the steps, was a deliberate gratuitous intermeddling with vice. Mr. Gresley could not help reading, but, as he laid down the manuscript for a moment to rest his eyes, he felt that he had reached the limit of Hester's powers, and that he could only attribute the last volume to the Evil One himself.