like that."

A few pages more, and his eyes were like flint. The admirable clergyman
who had attracted him from the first reappeared. His opinions were
uncommonly well put. But gradually it dawned upon Mr. Gresley that the
clergyman was toiling in very uncomfortable situations, in which he did
not appear to advantage. Mr. Gresley did not see that the uncomfortable
situations were the inevitable result of holding certain opinions, but
he did see that "Hester was running down the clergy." Any fault found
with the clergy was in Mr. Gresley's eyes an attack upon the Church,
nay, upon religion itself. That a protest against a certain class of the
clergy might be the result of a close observation of the causes that
bring ecclesiastical Christianity into disrepute could find no admission
to Mr. Gresley's mind. Yet a protest against the ignorance or
inefficiency of some of our soldiers he would have seen without
difficulty might be the outcome, not of hatred of the army, but of a
realization of its vast national importance, and of a desire of its
well-being.

Mr. Gresley was outraged. "She holds nothing sacred," he said, striking
the book. "I told her after the _Idyll_, that I desired she would not
mention the subject of religion in her next book, and this is worse than
ever. She has entirely disregarded my expressed wishes. Everything she
says has a sting in it. Look at this. It begins well, but it ends with a
sneer."

"Christ lives. He wanders still in secret over the hills and the valleys
of the soul, that little kingdom which should not be of this world,
which knows not the things that belong unto its peace. And earlier or
later there comes an hour when Christ is arraigned before the judgment
bar in each individual soul. Once again the Church and the world combine
to crush Him who stands silent in their midst, to condemn Him who has
already condemned them. Together they raise their fierce cry, 'Crucify
Him! Crucify Him!'"

Mr. Gresley tore the leaf out of the manuscript and threw it in the
fire.

But worse remained behind. To add to its other sins, the book, now
drawing to its close, took a turn which had been led up to inevitably
step by step from the first chapter, but which, in its reader's eyes,
who perceived none of the steps, was a deliberate gratuitous
intermeddling with vice. Mr. Gresley could not help reading, but, as he
laid down the manuscript for a moment to rest his eyes, he felt that he
had reached the