a moment the entire
multitude, at first raggedly, but soon in good unison, was singing--

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure:
Cleanse from guilt and make me pure.

The volume of sound was overwhelming. Its crashing force was enough to
sweep people from barrels. Edwin could feel moisture in his eyes, and
he dared not look at Hilda. "Why the deuce do I want to cry?" he asked
himself angrily, and was ashamed. And at the beginning of the second
verse, when the glittering instruments blared forth anew, and the
innumerable voices, high and loud, infantile and aged, flooded swiftly
over their brassy notes, subduing them, the effect on Edwin was the same
again: a tightening of the throat, and a squeezing down of the eyelids.
Why was it? Through a mist he read the words "The Blood of the Lamb,"
and he could picture the riven trunk of a man dying, and a torrent of
blood flowing therefrom, and people like his Auntie Clara and his
brother-in-law Albert plunging ecstatically into the liquid in order to
be white. The picture came again in the third verse,--the red fountains
and the frantic bathers.

Then the notability raised his arm once more, and took off his hat, and
all the males on the platform took off their hats, and presently every
boy and man in the Square had uncovered his head to the strong sunshine;
and at last Edwin had to do the same, and only the policemen, by virtue
of their high office, could dare to affront the majesty of God. And the
reverberating voice cried--

"Oh, most merciful Lord! Have pity upon us. We are brands plucked from
the burning." And continued for several minutes to descant upon the
theme of everlasting torture by incandescence and thirst. Nominally
addressing a deity, but in fact preaching to his audience, he announced
that, even for the veriest infant on a lorry, there was no escape from
the eternal fires save by complete immersion in the blood. And he was
so convinced and convincing that an imaginative nose could have detected
the odour of burnt flesh. And all the while the great purple banner
waved insistently: "The Blood of the Lamb."

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THREE.

When the prayer was finished for the benefit of the little ones, another
old and favourite hymn had to be sung. (None but the classical l