daughter played the organ, came next with
his wife, who made her way with an air of ownership to her seat, and
having covered her face with her hand for a moment, untied her
bonnet-strings and fanned her hot face. Every other moment now the door
burst open, and admitted someone from the dark blue outside--a group of
clumsy youths who flung themselves upon the pew doors as if they had
formed the deliberate purpose of keeping them out, some girls in their
finery nodding to acquaintances as they entered, some labourers in
unaccustomed clothes, and last Mary Colton who walked with her
calculating step to the nearest choir bench. Then a larger group
hesitated at the door and the evangelist entered, mounting the pulpit
with a confident tread, the minister taking a seat in the choir benches
and the stewards sitting behind him. There was some whispering between
the evangelist and the minister, then the evangelist remained seated and
the minister rose and gave out a hymn--

"Rescue the perishing, care for the dying."

Those who did not know the words knew and shouted the chorus. It was a
rousing beginning. As the hymn came to a final shout, Anne Hilton in a
black bonnet and old-fashioned mantle with a bead fringe at the
shoulders, with one black cotton glove half on and the other wholly off,
entered the chapel and sat just within the door.

The evangelist glanced round his congregation and found himself able to
believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an
ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had
no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist,
labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral
corruption. That was why he had been sent to the task of addressing the
country congregations. He was not working with an eye to romance, nor
for the glory which comes to those who work in the slums. He thought
with the thoughts of those among whom he worked. He had known what it
was to be hungry. He had known the crucifixion of standing idle when
every limb ached to be working. He knew that pregnant women are
sometimes beaten and kicked by the clogs of their husbands. He knew what
little children felt like when they cried from cold. His heart was
incessantly burning, but he had worked now for fifteen years and it was
no longer burning with indignation. He had found others, not Christians,
as he thought, who would be indignant, who would plan with pit