hat threatened Europe.

We were sitting on the verandah, overlooking the river, when we noticed
far down the zig-zag track that led to the house, a black-cloaked
figure. It was coming towards us and walked with the aid of a stick. As
it approached, it brought to my memory a similar figure I had met on the
Coblenz road; and I told Madame the story of my meeting with Wilbrid.

"If that is Wilbrid," she exclaimed, "he is spying. He must not see me
here."

I explained that it could not be the Great Humanist, as, eighteen months
before, he had changed his clerical garb for that of a civilian; and
this figure was old and bent, whereas Wilbrid was tall and erect.

I then went down the track to investigate. Within a hundred yards, the
person stopped and raised his hand.

"Jefson," was all he said.

It was Wilbrid!--but old, careworn, and almost out of breath.

"Why this change?" I asked, as I came up to him and we moved to a seat
at the side of the track.

"I'm down and out," he said. "My mission failed." And his chin sank upon
the top of the hand-clasped stick. "The crowd did not understand. You
know that I began to preach the doctrine of the Humanist to help the
masses to come into their own. You know we won upon the wave of reaction
that followed the war. We should have stayed at that level and moved
along, but the momentum was too great, the pendulum had swung too far;
for when the masses ruled they sinned worse than the party they
supplanted. They became more bitter autocrats than the rulers we
suppressed.

"Instead of 'Justice for the People,' it was 'Brute Strength for the
Mob.'

"I could not stem the flood that I had let loose. Heaven only knows how
hard I tried, for when I pleaded that a moderate track be taken, the mob
insisted that I sought a place to dominate, and put me in the rut.

"To-day they fear no law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction
has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into
a morass, and deeper in the mire have they rushed!"

He sat silent and watched the shadows creeping along the river.

"And what now?" I asked.

"I am going back--back to the monastery. I misread the world, I misread
human nature. I was one of the fools who think they know all the
statesmanship that controls the destinies of nations, who think their
petty untrained minds can grasp the great problems of diplomacy.

"I have found you can only qualify for high administrative posts