of life. It
brought down destiny.

"'Know ye not that your bodies,'" said the preacher--and he leaned out
and looked to the young men on the right--"'your bodies'"--and he looked
to the young men on the left--"'are the temples, of the Holy
Ghost'"--and he looked straightforward and paused as if he saw invisible
things.

He may have drawn a bow at a venture, but he seemed to have singled out
Ranny from among all those young men. He leaned over his pulpit, and
fixed his kindled and penetrating eyes on Ranny. He adjured Ranny to
remember that Sin which he had never committed; he implored him to
recall the shame which he had never felt, and at the same time to purge
himself of that unholy memory, and put away from him the sensual
thoughts that had never occurred to him and the abominable intentions
that he had never had.

Then, with a subtle and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise
of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of
emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and
competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon
of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a man of the world
who spoke to them of what he knew, in all sincerity, as man to man. And
then he soared again, flapping his great wings that fanned emotion to a
flame.

And through it all the young curate who had brought them there sat
folded more and more within his surplice, and became more and more red
as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some
young captain, wise though intrepid, who sees his brave battalions
routed through the false move of his general.

The magic worked. A man behind Ransome was heard breathing heavily. The
gentle drowsiness habitually expressed by Wauchope's broad and somewhat
flattened features was intensified to stupefaction. His head had sunk
slightly forward, but he looked up, lowering at the preacher with his
little innocent eyes, half sullen, half afraid.

Wauchope was merely uncomfortable. He suffered on the surface. But Ranny
was disturbed profoundly, shaken, excited, and most curiously uplifted.

He and Wauchope compared notes afterward on the preacher, whom they
called "that imported josser." They thought he rather fancied himself at
that particular job, and supposed that he was some sort of a "pro" who
had spoiled his "form" by overdoing it, and had lost the confidence of
his backers. They agreed that if Wa