character. Once again he was struck by the expression
of all the faces. He thought how calm, how trustful, how quietly
joyous these people must be feeling, in order to shine back at the
lamps as steadily and clearly as the lamps were shining on them.

"Friends, let us praise God by singing the hundred and tenth hymn
before we separate."

They all rose and began to sing their final song; and Dale observed
that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers
would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled to
silence and prayer.

"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

"The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, as vile as he,
Wash all my sins away."

Dale abruptly sat down, leaned forward, and then knelt upon the
boarded floor, hiding his face in his hands. He did not get up until
the pastor had given the blessing and the people were moving out.

XIX

As so often happens toward the latter part of April, there had come a
spell of unseasonably warm weather; thunder had been threatening for
the last week, and now at the end of an oppressive day you could
almost smell the electricity in the air.

Mavis warned Dale that he would get a sousing, when he told her that
he was obliged to go as far as Rodchurch.

"Won't it do to-morrow, Will?"

"No, I shan't have time to-morrow. Remember I'm not made of
barley-sugar. I shouldn't melt, you know, even if I hadn't got my
mack."

Norah fetched him his foul weather hat, and ran for his umbrella.

"No," he said, "I don't want that, my dear;" and he smiled at her very
kindly. "Besides, if we're going to have a storm, an umbrella is just
the article to bring the lightning down on my head."

Norah pulled away the umbrella hastily, as though she would now have
fought to the death rather than let him have it.

"Don't wait supper, Mav. I may be latish."

He walked fast, and his mackintosh made him uncomfortably warm. The
rain held off, although now and then a few heavy drops fell ominously.
It was quite dark--a premature darkness caused by the clouds that hung
right across the sky. There seemed to be nobody on the move but
himself; the street at Rodchurch was absolutely empty, the
tobacconist's shop at the corner being alone awake and feebly busy,
t