oved the young man.

David made no reply; he seemed lost in thought. "Let the discipline
proceed--he hath an evil spirit," said the shrill Elder.

"His childhood lacked in much," said Elder Fairley patiently.

To most minds present the words carried home--to every woman who had a
child, to every man who had lost a wife and had a motherless son. This
much they knew of David's real history, that Mercy Claridge, his mother,
on a visit to the house of an uncle at Portsmouth, her mother's brother,
had eloped with and was duly married to the captain of a merchant ship.
They also knew that, after some months, Luke Claridge had brought her
home; and that before her child was born news came that the ship her
husband sailed had gone down with all on board. They knew likewise that
she had died soon after David came, and that her father, Luke Claridge,
buried her in her maiden name, and brought the boy up as his son,
not with his father's name but bearing that name so long honoured in
England, and even in the far places of the earth--for had not Benn
Claridge, Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant, traveller, and
explorer in Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan--Benn Claridge of the
whimsical speech, the pious life? All this they knew; but none of them,
to his or her knowledge, had ever seen David's father. He was legendary;
though there was full proof that the girl had been duly married. That
had been laid before the Elders by Luke Claridge on an occasion when
Benn Claridge, his brother was come among them again from the East.

At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge,
and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the
East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with him
to England on the business of his country. These were Benn Claridge's
words: "Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy conscience
will bring thee safe home, lad."

"If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder.

"Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a
little in his struggle for self-control.

Another heretofore silent Elder, sitting beside John Fairley, exchanged
words in a whisper with him, and then addressed them. He was a very
small man with a very high stock and spreading collar, a thin face, and
large wide eyes. He kept his chin down in his collar, but spoke at the
ceiling like one blind, though his eyes were sharp enough