usively non-resisting, I scarcely knew this white
flame of a man, burning over the tea-bowl!

"You are kind to me," he cried, "and yet your heart is not touched. I
would give up my life gladly, brother, if I could only go up to the
Throne and say to Jesus, 'Behold, Lord, Thy son, Yen Sin, kneeling at
the foot of the Cross. Thou gavest me the power, Lord, and the glory is
thine!' If I could say that, brother, I--I--"

His voice trailed off, though his lips continued to move uncertainly.
His face was transfigured, his eyes filmed with dreams. He was looking
beyond Yen Sin now, and on the lost yellow millions. The tea, untasted,
smoked upward into his face, an insidious, narcotic cloud. I can think
of him now as he sat there, wresting out of his easeless years one
moment of those seminary dreams; the color of far-away, the sweet shock
of the alien and the bizarre, the enormous odds, the Game. The walls of
Yen Sin's shop were the margins of the world, and for a moment the
missionary lived.

"He would soften your heart," he murmured. "In a wondrous way. Have you
never thought, Yen Sin, 'I would like to be a good man'?"

The other spread his right hand across his breast.

"Mista Yen Sin velly humble dog. Mista Yen Sin no good. Mista Yen Sin's
head on le glound. Mista Yen Sin velly good man. Washy colla fine."

It was evidently an old point, an established score for the heathen.

"Yes, I must say, you do do your work. I've brought you that collar for
five years now, and it still seems new." The minister's face fell a
little. Yen Sin continued grave and alert.

"And Mista Matee Snow, yes? His colla allee same like new, yes?"

"Yes, I must say!" The other shook himself. "But it's not that, brother.
We're all of us wicked, Yen Sin, and unless we--"

"Mista Minista wickee?"

For a moment the minister's eyes seemed fascinated by the Chinaman's;
pain whitened his face.

"All of us," he murmured uncertainly, "are weak. The best among us sins
in a day enough to blacken eternity. And unless we believe, and have
faith in the Divine Mercy of the Father, and confess--confession--" His
voice grew stronger and into it crept the rapt note of one whose auditor
is within. "Confession! A sin confessed is no longer a sin. The word
spoken out of the broken and contrite heart makes all things right. If
one but had faith in that! If--if one had Faith!"

The life went out of his voice, the fire died in his eyes, his fingers
drooped on