ering from
their extraordinary supineness, issued a warrant for his arrest, but up
to the time of going to press he had escaped the vigilance of the
police."

Glory was breathing audibly as she read, and Liza, who was drawing up the
blind, looked back at her with surprise.

"Liza, have you mentioned to anybody that Father Storm was here last
night?"

"Why, no, miss, there ain't nobody stirring yet, and besides----"

"Then don't mention it to a soul. Will you do me that great, great
kindness?"

"Down't ye know I will, mum?" said Liza, with a twinkle of the eye and a
wag of the head.

Glory dressed hurriedly, went down to the drawing-room, and wrote a
letter. It was to Sefton, the manager. "Do not expect me to play
to-night. I don't feel up to it. Sorry to be so troublesome."

Then Rosa came in with another newspaper in her hand, and, without saying
anything, Glory showed her the letter. Rosa read it and returned it in
silence. They understood each other.

During the next few hours Glory's impatience became feverish, and as soon
as the first of the evening papers appeared she sent out for it. The
panic was subsiding, and the people who had gone to the outskirts were
returning to the city in troops, looking downcast and ashamed. No news of
Father Storm. Inquiry that morning at Scotland Yard elicited the fact
that nothing had yet been heard of him. There was much perplexity as to
where he had spent the previous night.

Glory's face tingled and burned. From hour to hour she sent out for new
editions. The panic itself was now eclipsed by the interest of John
Storm's disappearance. His followers scouted the idea that he had fled
from London. Nevertheless, he had fallen. As a pretender to the gift of
prophecy his career was at an end, and his crazy system of mystical
divinity was the laughing-stock of London.

"It does not surprise us that this second Moses, this mock Messiah, has
broken down. Such men always do, and must collapse, but that the public
should ever have taken seriously a movement which----" and then a
grotesque list of John's followers--one pawnbroker, one waiter, one
"knocker-up," two or three apprentices, etc.

As she read all this, Glory was at the same time glowing with shame,
trembling with fear, and burning with indignation. She dined with Rosa
alone, and they tried to talk of other matters. The effort was useless.
At last Rosa said:

"I have to follow this thing up for the paper, dear, and