being shaken with horrors-horrors growing daily, and that seemed as if the end would be unutterable night. How the wind shrieked and wailed!

Εγω Ιωσηφ ὁ ἀπο Αριμαθειας.

The words were written in fire on his mind!

The wind was shrieking louder and louder.

The Atlantic boomed in one continuous burst of sound.

He looked once more at the leading article in the paper.

It was that article which was long afterwards remembered as the "Simple Statement" article.

The writer had spoken the thought that was by this time trembling for utterance on the lips and in the brains of all Englishmen-the thought which had never been so squarely faced, so frankly stated before.

Here and there passages started out more vividly than the rest. The words seemed to start out and stab him.

"-So much for INDIA, where, sprung from the same Cause, the indications are impossible to mistake.

"Let us now turn to the ANGLO-SAXON sprung communities other than these Islands.

"In AMERICA we find a wave of lawlessness and fierce riot passing over the country, such as it has never known before.

"The IRISHMEN and ITALIANS, who throng the congested quarters of the great cities, are robbing and murdering PROTESTANTS and JEWS. The UNITED STATES Legislature is paralysed between the necessity of keeping order and the impossibility of resolution in the face of this tremendous bouleversement of belief.

"From AUSTRALIA the foremost prelate of the great

country writes of the utter overthrow of a communal moral sense, and concludes his communication with the following pathetic words:

"Everywhere,' he says, 'I see morals, no less than the religion which inculcates them, falling into neglect, set aside in a spirit of despair by fathers and mothers, treated with contempt by youths and maidens, spat upon and cursed by a degraded populace, assailed with eager sarcasm by the polite and cultured.'

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"The terrible seriousness of the situation need hardly be further insisted on here. Its reality cannot be more vividly indicated than by the statement of a single fact.

"-and therefore we demand, in the name of humanity, a far more comprehensive and representative searching into the facts of the alleged 'discovery' at JERUSALEM. Society is falling to pieces as we write.

"Who will deny the reason?

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And

Already, after a few short weeks, we are learning that the world cannot go on without Christianity. That is the Truth which the world is forced to realise. no essay in sociology, no special pleading on the part of Scientists or Historians, can shake our conviction that a creed which, when sudden doubts are thrown upon it, can be the means of destroying the essential fabric of human society, is not the true and unassailable creed of mankind.

"We foresee an immediate reaction. The consequences of the wave of antichristian belief are now,

and will be, so devastating, that sane men will find in Disbelief and its consequences a glorious recrudescence and assurance of Faith."

Hands stared into the dying fire.

A solemn passage from John Bright's great speech on the Crimean War came into his mind. The plangent power and deep earnestness of the words were even more applicable now than then.

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The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land: you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on.'

So they were asking for another commission! Well, they might try that as a forlorn hope, but he knew that his discovery was real. Could he be mistaken possibly? Could that congress of the learned be all mistaken and imposed upon? It was not possible. It could not be. Would that it were possible.

There was no hope, despite the newspapers. For centuries the world had been living in a fool's paradise. He had destroyed it. It would be a hundred years before the echoes of his deed had died away.

But the terrible weight of the world's burden was too heavy for him to bear. He knew that. Not for much longer could he endure it.

The life seemed oozing out of him, pressed out by a weight the sensation was physical.

He wished it was all over.

future, and no fear.

He had no hope for the

The weight was too heavy. The outside dark came through the walls, and began to close in on him. His

heart beat loudly. It seemed to rise up in his throat and choke him.

The pressure grew each moment; mountains were being piled upon him, heavier, more heavy.

The wind was but a distant murmur now, but the weight was crushing him. Only a few more moments and his heart would burst. At last!

The dark thing huddled on the hearth-rug, which the girl found when she came down in the morning, was the scholar's body.

The newspaper he had been reading lay upon his chest.

CHAPTER IV

CON

A LUNCHEON PARTY

ONSTANTINE SCHUABE'S great room at the Hotel Cecil had been entirely refurnished and arranged for the winter months.

The fur of great Arctic beasts lay upon the heavy Teheran carpets, which had replaced the summer matting-furs of enormous value. The dark red curtains which hung by windows and over doors were worked with threads of dull gold.

All the chairs were more massive in material and upholstered warmly in soft leather; the logs in the fireplace crackled with white flame, amethyst in the glowing cavern beneath.

However the winter winds might sweep over the Thames below or the rain splash and welter on the Embankment, no sound or sign of the turmoil could reach or trouble the people who moved in the fragrant warmth and comfort of this room.

For his own part Schuabe never gave any attention to the mise-en-scène by which he was surrounded, here or elsewhere. The head of a famous Oxford Street firm was told to call with his artists and undermen ; he was given to understand that the best that could be done was to be done, and the matter was left entirely to him.

In this there was nothing of the parvenu or of an ignorance of art, as far as Schuabe was concerned.