was
indissolubly connected with church, he made up his mind to go to church
the next Sunday and get matters straightened out.

At the same time another group was meeting at the Benedict.

Louis Akers had gone home early. By five o'clock he knew that the
chances were against him, but he felt a real lethargy as to the outcome.
He had fought, and fought hard, but it was only the surface mind of him
that struggled. Only the surface mind of him hated, and had ambitions,
dreamed revenge. Underneath that surface mind was a sore that ate like a
cancer, and that sore was his desertion by Lily Cardew. For once in his
life he suffered, who had always inflicted pain.

At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him that
Woslosky was dead, but the death of the Pole had been discounted in
advance, and already his place had been filled by a Russian agent, who
had taken the first syllable of his name and called himself Ross. Louis
Akers heard the news apathetically, and went back to his chair again.

By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that, too,
seemed relatively unimportant. He was not thinking coherently, but
certain vague ideas floated through his mind. There was a law of
compensation in the universe: it was all rot to believe that one was
paid or punished in the hereafter for what one did. Hell was real, but
it was on earth and its place was in a man's mind. He couldn't get away
from it, because each man carried his own hell around with him. It was
all stored up there; nothing he had done was left out, and the more he
put into it the more he got out, when the time came.

This was his time.

Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine o'clock,
an untasted meal on the table, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes on
the hearth. In the conference that followed he took but little part. The
Russian urged immediate action, and Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly
agreed with him. But Louis only half heard them. His mind was busy with
that matter of hell. Only once he looked up. Ross was making use of the
phrase: "Militant minority."

"Militant minority!" he said scornfully, "you overwork that idea, Ross.
What we've got here now is a militant majority, and that's what elected
Hendricks. You're licked before you begin. And my advice is, don't
begin."

But they laughed at him.

"You act like a whipped dog," Doyle said, "crawling under the doorstep
for fear somebody e