“Boys, he don’t like it!” and the wave of sound dropped as suddenly as it rose. “He comes!” cried an Italian. “So he does, Tony, so he does!” echoed the woman. “God bless him!” “He comes,” repeated Tony. “Hush you, boys--the Christman comes!” The Professor of Theology pressed the tips of his scholarly fingers upon his aging eyes. It was some moments before he commanded himself, and looked up. Bayard stood bareheaded in the color of the red sun. He was pale, notwithstanding the warmth of the evening, and had a look so worn that those who loved him most felt unspoken fear like the grip of a hand at their hearts. The transparence, the delicacy of his appearance,--bathed in the scarlet of the murky sunset, as he was,--gave him an aspect half unreal. He seemed for the moment to be a beautiful phantom rising from a mist of blood. A hush, half of reverence, half of awe, fell upon all the people; it grew so still that the lazy breath of the shallow wave at that moment spent upon the beach, could be heard stirring through the calm. Suddenly, and before the preacher had spoken any word, the impressive silence was marred by a rude sound. It was a girl’s coarse laugh. Then there was seen upon the beach, and quite apart from the throng, a little group of nameless women, standing with their backs to the sacred scene. Some one--Job Slip, perhaps, or Captain Hap--started with an exclamation of horror to suppress the disturbance, when the preacher’s lifted hand withstood him. To the consternation of his church officers, and to the astonishment of his audience, Bayard deliberately left the desk, and, passing through the throng, which respectfully divided before him to left and right, himself approached the women. “Lena!... _Magdalena!_” He said but that word. The girl looked up--and down. She felt as if an archangel from the heavens, commissioned with the rebuke of God, had smitten her with something far more terrible--the mercy of man. “You disturb us, Lena,” said the preacher gently. “Come.” She followed him; and the girls behind her. They hung their heads. Lena scrawled she knew not what with the tip of her gaudy parasol upon the beach. Her heavy eyes traced the little pebbles in the sand. For her life, she thought, she could not have lifted her smarting lids. Till that moment, perhaps, Lena had never known what shame meant. It overwhelmed her, like the deluge which one dreams may foretell the end of the world. The street girls followed the preacher silently. He conducted them gently through the throng, and seated them quite near the desk or table which served him as a pulpit. Some of his people frowned. The girls looked abashed at this courtesy. Bayard ignored both evidences of attention to his unexpected act, passing it by as a matter of course, and without further delay made signs to his singers, and the service began. * * * * *