tice, and that desire to participate in the eternal
strength of the children of labour as against the ephemeral and
fictitious strength of the children of idleness and wealth, found
strange confirmation in the chap-book legend.

For it seemed to Richard that, taking all that singular matter both of
prophecy and of cure simply--as believers take some half-miraculous,
scripture tale--he had already, in his own person, in right of the
physical uncomeliness of it, paid part, at all events, of the price
demanded by the Eternal Justice for his ancestors' sinning and for his
own. It was not needful that the bees should swarm and the dull-coloured
multitude revenge itself on the indolent, full-fed larvae peopling the
angular honey-cells, as far as he, Richard Calmady, was concerned. That
revenge had been taken long ago, in a mysterious and rather terrible
manner, before his very birth. While, in the stern denunciation, the
adhering curse, of the outraged and so-soon-to-be-childless mother, he
found the just and age-old protest, the patient faith in the eventual
triumph of the proletariat--of the defenseless poor as against the
callous self-seeking and sensuality of the securely guarded rich. By
the fact of his deformity he was emancipated from the delusions of his
class, was made one, in right of the suffering and humiliation of it,
with the dull-coloured multitudes whose corporate voice declares the
ultimate verdict, who are the architects and judges of civilisation, of
art, even of religion, even, in a degree, of nature herself. Salvation,
according to the sorry yet inspiring rhyme of the chap-book, was
contingent upon precisely this recognition of brotherhood with, and
practice of willing service towards, all maimed and sorrowful
creatures. His America was here or nowhere, his vocation clearly
indicated, his work immediate and close at hand.

How the Eternal Justice might see fit to deal with other souls, why he
had been singled out for so peculiar and conspicuous a fate, Richard
did not pretend to say. All that had become curiously unimportant to
him. For he had ceased to call that fate a cruel one. It had changed
its aspect. It had come suddenly to satisfy both his conscience and his
imagination. With a movement at once of wonder and of deep-seated
thankfulness, he, for the first time, held out his hands to it,
accepting it as a comrade, pledging himself to use rather than to spurn
it. He looked at it steadfastly and, so