he hell-fire threats that that religion factory of yours drilled in
you, you plank on Jude to-morrow, when you make him and Joyce man and
wife. How fervent was that factory of yours? There is a difference in
temperatures among them, I've heard."

"Oh! mine was mild," Drew was again helplessly convulsed, "so mild that
I'm afraid you'd call it frigid. But that doesn't matter. Future
damnation is a poor threat when every man among us knows that a present
hell is a much worse affair. It's the awakening of a soul to _that_
fact, that is going to save the world of men and women."

A full moon was sailing high in the heavens now, and Drew's animated
face showed clear in the pale gleam. Jock hitched his chair nearer.

"Do you mean to insinuate," he asked, "that you've been wasting your
time and health studying a line of preaching that hasn't got a red-hot
hell in the background for sinners?"

"I mean just that." Drew threw back his head proudly.

"What in thunder do you do with them, then?"

"We try--by God's help _I'm_ going to try--to take fear from them. Make
them _want_ to be decent. Make them _want_ to use the powers they have
in themselves. Make them want to work _with_ God, not alone _for_ God."

Jock's face was a puzzle. Admiration, pity, bewilderment, and a desire
to laugh, waged war. Finally he drawled:

"Well, I'll be eternally durned, if I ain't sorry that a bright chap
like you has wasted his youth, and pretty nearly drowned the vital
spark, in arriving at such a cold-storage conclusion as this here one
you've been airing. Why any one with half an eye can see that if
hell-fire can't stir sinners, a slow call to duty ain't going to get a
hustle on them. I swear if it wasn't so late, I'd get Gaston over here
to listen to your views. Gaston is open to all kinds of tommy-rot that
has a new mark on it. I'll be jiggered if I don't believe Gaston will
want to pay you a salary to keep you here just for a diversion. But take
my advice, and keep to old-fashioned lines, to-morrer 'specially, when
you come to the marrying. Lord! Lord! But Jude would be having a picnic
if he grasped that rose-coloured streamer of yours."

Drew made no reply. He was thinking, and his thoughts led where he knew
Jock could not follow.

Presently a thin, blue-veined hand stole out in the darkness and found
Filmer's.

"I--I--didn't know such men as you--such a place as this--existed," said
the low, eager voice. "It's like having died and