s quickly
as you did Vetturi."

He put on his hat and clenched his fists.

Without speaking another word, Landolin went on, while the vagrant
called after him with threats and insult.

The evening bells began ringing. Landolin nodded, as if greeting the
sound, or as though he felt they were calling him. He took a roundabout
way, so as not to pass through the church-yard where Vetturi's grave
was.

The church stood open. Landolin took off his hat, ordered the dog to
lie down and wait for him, and was just putting his foot on the
threshold, when Cushion-Kate came out. She gave him a look that made
him blench; then she caught the heavy church-door, and dashed it to
with such force that it fairly groaned. And louder yet the terrible
woman cried:

"For you the church is closed. Raise your hand! Here, at the church
door, kill me! You are equal to anything. You are rejected by God, cast
out by men. You----"

The dog had sprung up. His master quieted him, and the old woman went
away.

Landolin opened the door and entered the church. All was silent within,
save the pendulum's measured tick, far up in the tower. A bird had
flown through the open window. It fluttered about, affrighted, until it
found the opening again, and Landolin was alone in the vast edifice,
where the ever-burning lamp alone shed its light. No prayer escaped his
lips. Rather, in imagination he gathered in the whole congregation, men
and women, one by one, to their places. In imagination he took hold of
each one, looked him in the face, and shook him--but what good did that
do? They still hated him. Cast out, as a dead body, by the stream! Cast
out. All the empty benches repeated Cushion-Kate's words.

Hate of the God of whose compassion he had been taught in his
childhood, grew within him. It is not true, and if it were, what good
does it do for God to be pitiful, if he does not force men to be
pitiful too?

A sudden terror seized him, as though the roof were falling, and he
left the church and went home.

"Has no one been here?" he asked his wife when he reached home. She
said, "No;" but he did not answer her question as to where he had been
and with whom he had spoken. His wife's curiosity and idle questioning
were disagreeable to him. She saw that he did not value her love and
care, but she was patient. For she thought she was not wise and clever
enough for him, and resolved to be very careful in everything she did
or said. But in the goodnes