self, and I did not
question his sincerity. I knew his heart, black with all the lusts of
paganism. I knew that his purpose was to deluge the land with blood.
But I knew also that in his eyes his mission was divine, and that he
felt behind him all the armies of Heaven.

_'Thou hast been a strength to the poor,' said the voice, 'a refuge
from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the Terrible
Ones is as a storm against a wall._

_'Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry
place; the branch of the Terrible Ones shall be brought low._

_'And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a
feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full
of marrow._

_'And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast
over all people, and the vail that is brought over all nations._

_'And the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the
earth; for the Lord hath spoken it.'_

I listened spellbound as he prayed. I heard the phrases familiar to me
in my schooldays at Kirkcaple. He had some of the tones of my father's
voice, and when I shut my eyes I could have believed myself a child
again. So much he had got from his apprenticeship to the ministry. I
wondered vaguely what the good folks who had listened to him in
churches and halls at home would think of him now. But there was in
the prayer more than the supplications of the quondam preacher. There
was a tone of arrogant pride, the pride of the man to whom the Almighty
is only another and greater Lord of Hosts. He prayed less as a
suppliant than as an ally. A strange emotion tingled in my blood, half
awe, half sympathy. As I have said, I understood that there are men
born to kingship.

He ceased with a benediction. Then he put on his leopard-skin cloak
and kilt, and received from the kneeling chief a spear and shield. Now
he was more king than priest, more barbarian than Christian. It was as
a king that he now spoke.

I had heard him on board the liner, and had thought his voice the most
wonderful I had ever met with. But now in that great resonant hall the
magic of it was doubled. He played upon the souls of his hearers as on
a musical instrument. At will he struck the chords of pride, fury,
hate, and mad joy. Now they would be hushed in breathless quiet, and
now the place would echo with savage assent. I remember noticing that
the face of my neighbour, 'Mwanga,