Far below, Port o' Man nestled peacefully in its bay. A sort of toy town even in reality, from this height it appeared to the watcher as if modelled by a child in coloured clays, so remote and still and small it was. It looked no more than a thin moon of buildings between the fields and the sea. No sound came up so far, but now and again there was a sparkle on the edge of the brown rocks when the surf ran up a shade higher than usual, and in the wide expanse of sea itself, green and blue changed the one with the other perpetually. Moreover Paul's sharp eyes could detect a vivid spot of scarlet on the sands that was never still either. He knew it to be the banner of the Children's Special Service Mission, flapping in the wind. He ought, of course, to have been there, and when he had announced to Mr. Stuart, the leader, his intention of playing truant for one whole, golden morning, he had been received with frowns. But that had not daunted Paul. It took a good deal more than a Mr. Stuart, in fact, to daunt him. And so he had risen before the sun and taken his stick and his breakfast, and departed for a long, solitary climb up South Barrule. Dick Hartley had offered to come as well, but Paul had refused. In the first place he wanted to be alone; in the second, he really did not want Dick of all people, however much he loved him, just then; and thirdly, he had still a sense of missionary responsibility, and he declined to deplete the staff for a single day by another worker. Nevertheless, he was there himself on that day because he was rapidly reaching a frame of mind which would probably make the C.S.S.M., and many other evangelical activities, finally impossible. Mr. Stuart, for example--he reflected on Mr. Stuart. He was a nice, big, old gentleman whom parents liked. He had no visible vices of any sort. He liked a really big dinner in the midday on Sunday. He played cricket on the sands with a kindly smile and the aptitude of a rhinoceros. He told impossible school stories fifty years old when preaching on the sands, and the moral of them all was the same--the necessity for a clean heart. As for his own heart, he was quite sure that it was clean. He was Church of England, but he had only one definite theological belief--Salvation was by Faith Alone without Works. But he had one strong negation--he believed that Confirmation was unbiblical and wrong. And, instructively enough, it was over Confirmation that Paul was beginning to jib.