ead of facing them. It
was this which made him think it worth while to be angry, and to consider
whether he could not at least do something towards saving others from
such years of waste and misery as he had had to pass himself. If there
was no truth in the miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and
Resurrection, the whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth
of those events tumbled to the ground. "My," he exclaimed, with all the
arrogance of youth, "they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for
getting money out of silly people who think they have supernatural power;
why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can
absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One who
died two thousand years ago? What," he asked himself, "could be more
pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a young
man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work this
miracle? It was all very well to talk about toleration; toleration, like
everything else, had its limits; besides, if it was to include the bishop
let it include the fortune-teller too." He would explain all this to the
Archbishop of Canterbury by and by, but as he could not get hold of him
just now, it occurred to him that he might experimentalise advantageously
upon the viler soul of the prison chaplain. It was only those who took
the first and most obvious step in their power who ever did great things
in the end, so one day, when Mr Hughes--for this was the chaplain's
name--was talking with him, Ernest introduced the question of Christian
evidences, and tried to raise a discussion upon them. Mr Hughes had been
very kind to him, but he was more than twice my hero's age, and had long
taken the measure of such objections as Ernest tried to put before him. I
do not suppose he believed in the actual objective truth of the stories
about Christ's Resurrection and Ascension any more than Ernest did, but
he knew that this was a small matter, and that the real issue lay much
deeper than this.

Mr Hughes was a man who had been in authority for many years, and he
brushed Ernest on one side as if he had been a fly. He did it so well
that my hero never ventured to tackle him again, and confined his
conversation with him for the future to such matters as what he had
better do when he got out of prison; and here Mr Hughes was ever ready to
listen to him with sympathy and kindness.

CHAPTER L