But if his entry meant ennui to himself, it was a most dramatic event to the congregation. At first, indeed, this stranger in the fashionable jacket was not associated with Caleb, whose return to the fold was a separate thrill. It was believed for an instant that a veritable gentleman had succumbed to the Truth, and even when it was perceived that he was no other than Will Flynt, the news of whose home-coming had reached the majority, the sensation did not abate, for was not God still visibly with His peculiar flock, turning back the hearts of the wanderers, whether of the old generation or the young? A breath of new inspiration shook the hall, and the grey-haired Brother who had just begun reading the thirteenth chapter of Acts faltered in his mispronunciation of Cyrene. As he went on droning out the chapter—surely the longest in the Bible, chosen maliciously to depress him further, thought Will—its burden of the people of God, set for a light to the Gentiles, evoked a mounting exaltation, and those who had come with no thought of testifying, found themselves possessed of the Spirit. There was in particular a man with mutton-chop whiskers, on the bench in front of Will, whose body swayed with excitement, and who punctuated the reading with breathless jerks of nasal interpolation. “Be-yu-tiful!” “Yes!” “Amen!” “Thank Gord!” “Mercy!” and the like. And when at last the chapter ended on the verse “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost,” it lifted the man to his feet and he poured forth the story of his sinful past. “Oi was Church of England—in the choir—and wore black and whoite gowns—and rang the bells—and was confirmed and all—but Gord had never pardoned my sins.” Will stifled a yawn and looked towards the door. But the rest of the audience hung upon the tale—the tale of a death-bed repentance of Churchmanship and the miraculous recovery to lead the better life of the Peculiar Brotherhood. “Oi asked the Elder to howd up my hands, so that Oi might die praising Gord for the revelation.” Sobs came from the left benches, but they only fevered Will. He sat in a dull fury, dazed by words that passed over his brain without leaving a meaning. “Oh, what a thronging boy and boy—a land where we shall never say ‘Good noight’—engraved in eternal brass—the Lord shoines on your heart—sheep and goats—streets paved with pure gold as it were transparent glass!” It was not till he felt his arm clutched by Caleb in the old man’s excitement at hearing this last phrase that Will connected such words with reality at all, and they faded back into mere religion till a sudden mention of “John in the oil of Patmos” shot up a quaint picture of a too profuse anointment.