shillings and sixpence."

Presently he passed the new temple, but it was too dark for him to do
more than see that it was a vast fane, and must have cost an untold
amount of money. At every turn he found himself more and more shocked,
as he realised more and more fully the mischief he had already
occasioned, and the certainty that this was small as compared with that
which would grow up hereafter.

"What," he said to me, very coherently and quietly, "was I to do? I had
struck a bargain with that dear fellow, though he knew not what I meant,
to the effect that I should try to undo the harm I had done, by standing
up before the people on Sunday and saying who I was. True, they would
not believe me. They would look at my hair and see it black, whereas it
should be very light. On this they would look no further, but very
likely tear me in pieces then and there. Suppose that the authorities
held a _post-mortem_ examination, and that many who knew me (let alone
that all my measurements and marks were recorded twenty years ago)
identified the body as mine: would those in power admit that I was the
Sunchild? Not they. The interests vested in my being now in the palace
of the sun are too great to allow of my having been torn to pieces in
Sunch'ston, no matter how truly I had been torn; the whole thing would be
hushed up, and the utmost that could come of it would be a heresy which
would in time be crushed.

"On the other hand, what business have I with 'would be' or 'would not
be?' Should I not speak out, come what may, when I see a whole people
being led astray by those who are merely exploiting them for their own
ends? Though I could do but little, ought I not to do that little? What
did that good fellow's instinct--so straight from heaven, so true, so
healthy--tell him? What did my own instinct answer? What would the
conscience of any honourable man answer? Who can doubt?

"And yet, is there not reason? and is it not God-given as much as
instinct? I remember having heard an anthem in my young days, 'O where
shall wisdom be found? the deep saith it is not in me.' As the singers
kept on repeating the question, I kept on saying sorrowfully to
myself--'Ah, where, where, where?' and when the triumphant answer came,
'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is
understanding,' I shrunk ashamed into myself for not having foreseen it.
In later life, when I have tried to use this answer as a li