e was but the mouthpiece of authority, having
none of it himself.

"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered.

Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given
that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new
power that had covered it.

"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their
damnation be on your head, then."

The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow
sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock.

From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven;
he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more
imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare
people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted
pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had
combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl
at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater
opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used
it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that
he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use.
His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his
mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly
attacked the Roman Church.

"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the
rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to
hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and
its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the
priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without
price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does
he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?"

There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned
from the platform.

"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson
could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see
the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!"

In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of
a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the
platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes
with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read
in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own