the clamor.

Then out of the confused babel of sound one cry became distinguishable.

"The Prophet! The Prophet! Let the Prophet speak!"

For a space confusion reigned; then, answering to the demand, the
Prophet again lifted his right hand.

As though it exercised some potent spell, his calm, imperious gesture
subdued the turmoil. When silence had been restored he began to speak;
and never, since he had addressed the first Gathering, had so deep a
note of domination and decision been audible in his voice.

"Mystics!" he cried, "there is no time for preamble or delay. As the
Arch-Mystic says, you must have truth! Perhaps there is no need to tell
you that the history I have just related to you has an imminent bearing
upon your lives and mine. You probably know, without my telling, that
the boy of my story and I are one and the same person; that the fanatic
sect, for which I was made a beggar, is your own sect--the sect of the
Mystics. But so it is. On a wild, dark night ten years ago I learned
that the money which should have been mine--the money which should have
been the recompense for my mother's hard life--had been given to you.
Given for the use of a Prophet in whose coming you believed!

"My feelings on that night were the criminal feelings that underlie all
civilization. I had only one desire--to destroy--to be avenged. My
uncle, Andrew Henderson, was an Arch-Mystic of your sect; and on the
night he died, your sacred Scitsym was in his house!"

The congregation thrilled, and the blind Arch-Councillor turned and
clutched Bale-Corphew's arm.

"My first impulse was to destroy that book. Look at it, look at it!" He
pointed to the lectern. "Ten years ago, I knelt before a fire with its
pages in my hand, and black thoughts of revenge in my heart. But the
devil of temptation lurks in strange places. In the very act of
destruction, an inspiration came to me. A man was expected! A Prophet
was expected! And in the pages of the Scitsym were contained the
attributes, the secret signs, the manifold ways in which he was to make
good his claim.

"I come of an obstinate stock--of a stock that in the past has overcome
many obstacles. That night I copied out the whole of your Scitsym, and
afterwards, as soon as I reasonably could, I left Scotland.

"I went at once to my mother; I told her that, according to the
disposition of my uncle's will, I was to inherit his fortune in ten
years' time, and that in the interval I was