eople--Arians, Calvinists, Churchmen--gathered every Sunday, and
air and sunshine and God's charity made the day holy. These churches
lifted their hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly alms
in the morning journals. To be sure the back-seats were free for the
poor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of the
arches, the very purity of the preacher's style, said plainly that it
was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a man
in a red wamus to enter the kingdom of heaven through that gate.

Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned aside,
and but half a river crept reluctantly by; the hills were but bare
banks of yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading through these.
Margret climbed it slowly. The low town-hills, as I said, were bare,
covered at their bases with dingy stubble-fields. In the sides
bordering the road gaped the black mouths of the coal-pits that
burrowed under the hills, under the town. Trade everywhere,--on the
earth and under it. No wonder the girl called it a hard, scraping
world. But when the road had crept through these hills, it suddenly
shook off the cinders, and turned into the brown mould of the
meadows,--turned its back on trade and the smoky town, and speedily
left it out of sight contemptuously, never looking back once. This was
the country now in earnest.

Margret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh cold air.
Far behind her, panting and puffing along, came a black, burly figure,
Dr. Knowles. She had seen him behind her all the way, but they did not
speak. Between the two there lay that repellent resemblance which made
them like close relations,--closer when they were silent. You know
such people? When you speak to them, the little sharp points clash.
Yet they are the few whom you surely know you will meet in the life
beyond death, "saved" or not. The Doctor came slowly along the quiet
country-road, watching the woman's figure going as slowly before him.
He had a curious interest in the girl,--a secret reason for the
interest, which as yet he kept darkly to himself. For this reason he
tried to fancy how her new life would seem to her. It should be hard
enough, her work,--he was determined on that; her strength and
endurance must be tested to the uttermost. He must know what stuff was
in the weapon before he used it. He had been reading the slow, cold
thing for years,--had not got