her clothes had been made by an artist, and probably came either from London or Paris. During the next few minutes I gave furtive glances towards her, and was not impressed favorably. She was good-looking, almost strikingly so; but she seemed to me to have no soul. She looked around the building as though she had come there under protest. She gave not the slightest evidence that the service meant anything to her.

The man in the pulpit was, I suppose, of more intelligence than the ordinary man of his class, and having said that, I have said all. I did not want to be critical. I hungered for food, for light. I reflected that Simpson had told me that congregations had fallen off and that there seemed to be no eagerness about religion as there had been thirty years before. I did not wonder at that if this man was a fair exponent of it. By what right or by what authority he was there I do not know, and how he dared to pretend to tell people about the deep things of life I could not imagine. After he had been preaching a few minutes he appeared to get, according to the phraseology which I have since heard, "warmed to his subject." This meant that he shouted, and on two or three occasions struck the Bible; but, taken as a whole, it was the parrot-like utterance of an ignorant man. I am almost tempted to give a detailed description of his discourse, but I will not do so. I am too heart-sore at the thought of it. What help was there for me, a poor wretch with his death-warrant signed? What help was there for the people who sat stolidly in their pews? Why should the boys and girls of the villages or the toil-worn laboring men and women go there? I could see no reason.

As far as I could judge, the presence of the man and his daughter in the back pew and I myself, the stranger who had taken up his abode in a wooden hut, attended only by a man-servant, was of far more interest to the people than what the man had to say.

I left with a heavy heart. At any rate, I received no assurance of any life after death. I was no nearer conviction of anything which goes by the name of spiritual. As I made my way to the door an old man came up and spoke to me.

"Mornin', sir. Glad to see you."

"Thank you," I said.

"You bean't from these parts, be you?" he asked curiously.

"No," I replied.

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