y moment when he should be closest to them, advising,
helping, encouraging. This divided impulse was a torture, and as the
weeks went on he ate less and less and slept scarcely at all. He had
been for a long time past in delicate health owing to the weakness of
his heart, and now he began to look strange indeed, with his bright
gaunt face with its prominent cheek-bones, his eyes straining to see
beyond his actual vision, his flowing white beard. His doctor, a
cheerful, commonplace little man, a member of the Chapel, although not
a Saint, tried to do his best with him, but his visits only led to
scenes of irritation, and Warlock obeyed none of his commands. After a
visit on the afternoon of Christmas Eve he took Amy aside:

"Look here," he said, "unless you keep a stricter eye on your father
than you have been doing he'll be leaving you altogether."

She looked up at him with that odd dark impassivity that seemed to
remove her so deliberately from her fellow-beings.

"It's very well to talk like that," she said. "But how is any one to
have any control over him? He listens to nothing that we say, and if we
insist he's in a frenzy of irritation."

"Can your mother do nothing?" the doctor asked.

"Mother?" Amy smiled. "No, mother can do nothing."

"Well," said the doctor, "any sudden shock will kill him--I warn you."

When the fog came down upon the city Warlock was already in too thick a
fog of his own to perceive it.

He was sure now of nothing. It seemed as though all the spirits of the
other world now were taunting him, but he felt that this was the work
of the Devil, who wished to destroy his faith before the Great Day
arrived. He thought now that the Devil was closely pursuing him, and he
seemed to hear first his taunting whisper and then the voice of God
encouraging him: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

He had lost now almost all consciousness of what he really expected to
happen when the Day arrived, but he was dimly aware that if nothing
happened at all his whole influence with his people would be gone.
Nevertheless this did not trouble him very greatly; the congregation of
the Chapel seemed now dimly remote. The only human being who was not
remote was Martin; his love for his son had not been touched by his
other struggles, it had been even intensified. But the love had grown a
terror, ever increasing, lest Martin should leave him. He seemed to
hear dimly, beyond the wall of the mysterious worl