ore to
tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of
me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a
mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears the
Host!"

He stood up at full length, the personification of grandeur and power. A
tremendous force trembled in his very finger tips. He was like a
gigantic dynamo, charged with the might of ten thousand magnetic storms
that shake the earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets through
infinities of space....

Under ordinary circumstances Ernest or any other man would have quailed
before him. But the boy in that epic moment had grown out of his
stature. He felt the sword of vengeance in his hands; to him was
intrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of Ethel and of Jack. His
was the struggle of the individual soul against the same blind and cruel
fate that in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.

"By what right," he cried, "do you assume that you are the literary
Messiah? Who appointed you? What divine power has made you the steward
of my mite and of theirs whom you have robbed?"

"I am a light-bearer. I tread the high hills of mankind.... I point the
way to the future. I light up the abysses of the past. Were not my
stature gigantic, how could I hold the torch in all men's sight? The
very souls that I tread underfoot realise, as their dying gaze follows
me, the possibilities with which the future is big.... Eternally secure,
I carry the essence of what is cosmic ... of what is divine.... I am
Homer ... Goethe ... Shakespeare.... I am an embodiment of the same
force of which Alexander, Caesar, Confucius and the Christos were also
embodiments.... None so strong as to resist me."

A sudden madness overcame Ernest at this boast. He must strike now or
never. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac--this demon of
strength. With a power ten times intensified, he raised a heavy chair so
as to hurl it at Reginald's head and crush it.

Reginald stood there calmly, a smile upon his lips.... Primal cruelties
rose from the depth of his nature.... Still he smiled, turning his
luminous gaze upon the boy ... and, behold ... Ernest's hand began to
shake ... the chair fell from his grasp.... He tried to call for help,
but no sound issued from his lips.... Utterly paralysed he
confronted ... the Force....

Minutes--eternities passed.

And still those eyes were fixed upon him.

But