y; but we are all of us rather
partial to blind man's holiday--not to mention that oil is oil, and
that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford
to do that. But there it is--Take care of the pence."

To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there
among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the
correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the
harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.

They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For
a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every
cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight
up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn
would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of
blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to
produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but
almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing
solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set
him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the
hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn
itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and
to nobody else.

"Hail, sov'reign love, that first began
The scheme to rescue fallen man!
Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace,
That gave my soul a hiding-place."

With his face turned as much as possible from the singers, he stood
very stiff and erect, staring at the printed page. Loudly as they had
sung the first verse they seemed to sing the second verse more loudly.

"Against the God that rules the sky,
I fought with hand uplifted high;
Despised His rich abounding grace,
Too proud to seek a hiding-place."

Dale braced himself, squared his shoulders and stood more erect than
ever as they struck into the third verse.

They sang louder than before: it seemed to him that they were
screaming.

"But thus th' eternal counsel ran,
'_Almighty_ love, arrest that man!'"

Dale closed the hymn-book, held it behind his back, and stared at the
cross-beams of the roof until the hymn was over.

After the hymn Mr. Osborn read a couple of chapters from the Bible,
and Dale, seated again, understood how utterly unfounded had been his
recent notion that these people wer