“I visited sixteen of the dens of this town this last week,” replied Bayard. “I took a policeman, and went through the whole thing. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t go to church if I were they. I shall dream about what I saw--I don’t know that I shall ever stop dreaming about it. It is too horrible to tell. I wouldn’t even _speak_ what I saw men and women _live_. The old sailors who have seen a good many ports, call it a hell of a town. My own idea is, that it isn’t a particle worse than other places of its class. I fancy it’s a fair, average seaport town. Six thousand seamen sail this harbor every year. I can’t get at the number of dens they support; such figures are runaway lunatics, you understand; they have a genius for hiding; and nobody _wants_ to find them. But put it low--call it two hundred--in this little town. If it isn’t the business of a Christian church to shut them--whose is it? If it isn’t the business of religious people to look after these fellows--whose is it? I say, religious people are answerable for them, and for their vices! The best people are responsible for the worst, or there’s no meaning in the New Testament, and no sense in the Christian religion. Oh,” said Bayard, with a sound that was more like a moan than a sigh, “if Christ could come into Angel Alley--just this one street! If He could take this little piece of a worldful of human woe--modern human misery, you understand, all the new forms and phases that Palestine knew nothing about--if He could sweep it clean, and show us how to do it _now_! Think, Fenton, think, how He would go to work--what that would be!... sometimes I think it would be worth dying for.” “It strikes me it is harder to guess than predestination,--what He would do if He were reincarnated,” replied Fenton gravely. “It had not struck me so,” answered Bayard gently, “but there may be something in that.” “Now,” continued Fenton, “take yourself. I fancy you believe--Do you suppose _you_ are doing the kind of thing He would set about, if He were in your place?” “How can I tell?” replied Bayard in a voice so low that it was scarcely articulate. “How can a man _know_? All I do know is, that I try. That is what--and that is all--I try to do. And I shall keep on trying, till I die.” He spoke with a solemnity which admitted of no light response, even from a worldly man. Fenton was not that, and his eyes filled. “Well,” he said, after a silence, “you are a good man, Emanuel Bayard. God go with you.” “And with you,” replied Bayard, holding out his hand. “Our roads lie different ways. We shall not talk like this again.” “You won’t mind that? You won’t feel it,” said Fenton uncomfortably, for he had risen to leave, and the conversation hung heavily on his heart, “if I don’t run across your way, often? It would hardly do, you see. My people--the church--the circumstances”--