up by a narrow leather belt around the hips
such as laborers wear.

Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old woman were
already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the Bishop had
built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil.
I was to learn, as time went by, that there were many cases similar
to hers, and many worse, hidden away in the monstrous depths of the
tenements in my neighborhood.

We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first
surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,
stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a
comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had met since
his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening weeks he must
have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us much, though he told
us more of the joy he had experienced in doing the Master's bidding.

"For truly now," he said, "I am feeding his lambs. And I have learned
a great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is
appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and
meat; after that, and only after that, are their spirits ready for more
refined nourishment."

He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such an
appetite at our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and he said that
he had never been so healthy in his life.

"I walk always now," he said, and a blush was on his cheek at the
thought of the time when he rode in his carriage, as though it were a
sin not lightly to be laid.

"My health is better for it," he added hastily. "And I am very
happy--indeed, most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit."

And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the world
that he was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in the raw, and it
was a different life from what he had known within the printed books of
his library.

"And you are responsible for all this, young man," he said directly to
Ernest.

Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.

"I--I warned you," he faltered.

"No, you misunderstand," the Bishop answered. "I speak not in reproach,
but in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me my path. You led me
from theories about life to life itself. You pulled aside the veils from
the social shams. You were light in my darkness, but now I, too, see the
light. And I am very happy, only . . ." he hesitated painfully, and in
hi