to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content
with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his
fellow-men--in Eldon Parr? Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that
evening of rain and thunder in the boy's room at the top of the great
horse in Park Street. He had pitied Eldon Parr then. Did he now?

He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more
this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face
with the sheet.

Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,--he had to face the woman!
He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had
spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and
goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church. What should he
say, now? In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside
the window and buried his face in his hands. The sight of poor Garvin's
white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable
tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and porcelains and
tapestries, brought home to him with indescribable poignancy his own
predicament. He was going to ask this woman to be comforted by faith and
trust in the God of the man who had driven her husband to death! He
beheld Eldon Parr in his pew complacently worshipping that God, who had
rewarded him with riches and success--beheld himself as another man in
his white surplice acquiescing in that God, preaching vainly . . . .

At last he got to his feet, went out of the room, reached the doorway of
that other room and looked in. Mr. Bentley sat there; and the woman,
whose tears had ceased to flow, was looking up into his face.

II

"The office ensuing," says the Book of Common Prayer, meaning the Burial
of the Dead, "is not to be used for any Unbaptized adult, any who die
excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands on themselves."

Hodder had bought, with a part of Nan Ferguson's money, a tiny plot in a
remote corner of Winterbourne Cemetery. And thither, the next morning,
the body of Richard Garvin was taken.

A few mourners had stolen into the house and up the threadbare stairs
into the miserable little back room, somehow dignified as it had never
been before, and laid their gifts upon the coffin. An odd and pitiful
assortment they were--mourners and gifts: men and women whose only bond
with the man in life had been the bond of misery; who had seen him as he
had fared forth