to you, Rowland Prothero? Who put you over me as judge and
counsellor?'

'Netta. As spiritual counsellor, at least; and in her name, since you
will not let me appeal to you in a Higher name, I command you to listen
to me.'

Rowland saw that he had gained an advantage by appealing to Netta, and
that Howel checked the irony that was on his tongue, out of reverence
for her name. At once he spoke as an ambassador in that Higher name he
had feared to use before.

Rowland had had ten years' experience of men as bad and worse than
Howel, and had learnt how to speak to them, and to seize the mood of the
listener. He knew Howel well; and he, therefore, used the strong and
powerful language of the Bible, as the priests, prophets, and apostles
used it--as the word of God to man. Not diluted by their own
reflections, but in its bare and grand simplicity. He had not made the
Bible his study in vain. He knew how to bring it to the heart of men
with a power that none 'could gainsay or resist,' Even Howel, sceptic,
scoffer as he was, listened in spite of himself.

Rowland was a humbler man than he had been, when he used, years before,
to argue with Howel, and endeavour to convert him to the truth. He was
equally right in his views then, but he gave them forth more
dogmatically, and allowed self to peep in; now self was wholly swallowed
up in the Word itself; and so Howel gave heed as to God, and not to man.

He laid bare Howel's heart to himself, for the first time that it had
ever been so exposed, and then showed him the denunciations of the law
against sin. He did not spare him. He knew that the only way to save
such a man was by bringing him to know himself first, and then to ''
preach repentance and remission of sin.'

In his energy and longing to rescue him from destruction, he stood
before him as one sent to tear up his unbelief by the roots not to dally
with it.

'Flee from the wrath to come,' might have been the text of his
discourse, as it was that of the Baptist.

When he paused, as if for breath, Howel exclaimed,--

'Enough! enough! Stop! I can hear no more; you have opened to me the
gates of hell wide enough.'

'And now I would open those of heaven. Let us pray.'

Rowland's eyes flashed such a fire as Howel had never seen in them
before; his voice and words had a command that he had never heard.
Perforce he obeyed. And there, in that narrow cell, actuated by fear,
rather than remorse, astonishment rather than