The vagrant made a motion toward the plain. "I had three years. If my master had been good to me, and had not prosecuted me----" "So you are just out of the Penitentiary?" The man nodded, and smiled in a confidential way. "And why should I, in particular, take you?" "Well, just because it is so. Of course, after this, your servants will have an easy time. You'll get a new set throughout, and you'd better have me to watch the rest." The veins swelled on Landolin's forehead, but he concealed his annoyance, laughed aloud, and called out in a commanding tone: "March! How dare you speak to me so? Off with you, or----" "Oho! So you want to murder another man. You can't finish me as quickly as you did Vetturi." He put on his hat and clenched his fists. Without speaking another word, Landolin went on, while the vagrant called after him with threats and insult. The evening bells began ringing. Landolin nodded, as if greeting the sound, or as though he felt they were calling him. He took a roundabout way, so as not to pass through the church-yard where Vetturi's grave was. The church stood open. Landolin took off his hat, ordered the dog to lie down and wait for him, and was just putting his foot on the threshold, when Cushion-Kate came out. She gave him a look that made him blench; then she caught the heavy church-door, and dashed it to with such force that it fairly groaned. And louder yet the terrible woman cried: "For you the church is closed. Raise your hand! Here, at the church door, kill me! You are equal to anything. You are rejected by God, cast out by men. You----" The dog had sprung up. His master quieted him, and the old woman went away. Landolin opened the door and entered the church. All was silent within, save the pendulum's measured tick, far up in the tower. A bird had flown through the open window. It fluttered about, affrighted, until it found the opening again, and Landolin was alone in the vast edifice, where the ever-burning lamp alone shed its light. No prayer escaped his lips. Rather, in imagination he gathered in the whole congregation, men and women, one by one, to their places. In imagination he took hold of each one, looked him in the face, and shook him--but what good did that do? They still hated him. Cast out, as a dead body, by the stream! Cast out. All the empty benches repeated Cushion-Kate's words. Hate of the God of whose compassion he had been taught in his childhood, grew within him. It is not true, and if it were, what good does it do for God to be pitiful, if he does not force men to be pitiful too? A sudden terror seized him, as though the roof were falling, and he left the church and went home.