Every eye turned to Griff, sitting with a rigid face, like one returned from the dead. A superstitious awe gained on the folk; they were ripe to credit a miracle in their present exalted state. "I ran down the hill and fell, and lay in a swoon for a while," went on the preacher. "When I went to the pool, there was no body there, and I pictured him lying in the mud at the bottom--lying, and waiting till the trump of the Judgment Day called him to tell what he knew." Griff hardened his face yet further. He found it a strain not to wince under those keen eye-shafts, focussed on him from every quarter of the chapel, like needles about a magnet. The preacher, regarding him steadfastly, rose to a splendid height of egoism. "But God had been watching over this moment, watching over the feet of Gabriel Hirst, the least and most sinful of His servants. Before I came into the world, He had set the seed of a thorn-tree in the side of the quarry; the tree grew, till its branches were strong to support the fall of a man. The brother I loved, the brother I had all but killed in my hate, fell safe into the bush, as God in His mercy had ordained. The sin of will is mine, black as ever, but the sin of the deed has been lightened. Lift up your hearts, ye children of God, and thank your Father for His mercies, and take heed by my own fall how you let the devil creep into your hearts." His voice was weakening, his grip of the ledge in front of him grew less firm. But he had something yet to say. "Griff Lomax, I have laboured to bring you into the straight way of faith. The Lord has delivered you; turn to the Lord and believe in Him." The Rev. Abel Bell struck up the Doxology, obeying instinct rather than the prompting of reason. The little chapelful of people joined in with one voice, till the walls seemed to rock with the clashing waves of sound. But Gabriel Hirst had fainted on the floor of the pulpit. Quietly Griff moved down the aisle, and took his friend in his arms. He carried him into the vestry, and was sprinkling water over his face before the congregation was fairly alive to what had happened. When the Doxology had been sung--and sung again--there began a great harvesting of souls. Few of those present could withstand the swift excitement of such a confession as they had lately listened to. Never before had the Rev. Abel Bell witnessed so goodly a gathering in to the Lord. When the fervour had subsided a little, and the time was at hand for an adjournment to the class-room, there to enroll the converted, Griff moved up to the pulpit and mounted the stair. He gave them a level narrative of what had happened at Whins Quarry, and he so over-rated Gabriel's cause for hate that his after-action showed excusable; he went further, moving warily step by step, till he had proved that any man, with manhood in him, must have acted as the preacher had done. And then, as he turned to go--