Meanwhile, inside the tabernacle Bram was wondering what he should do with the beastly place. He struck a match, but the shadows it conjured all over the great gaunt building made him nervous, and he soon abandoned the project of burning the whole place to the ground. He thought and thought how to celebrate his adventure at the expense of the worshippers when they gathered together to-morrow morning to groan loudly over their own sins and louder still over the sins of other people. He could think of nothing. Inspiration was utterly lacking. Had he known beforehand that he was going to break into Bethesda like this, what a multitude of tricks he would have been ready to play. As it was, he would just have to climb out again and be content with the barren triumph of having climbed in. He had struck another match to light his path out among the benches without barking his shins as he had barked them feeling his way in from the window, and it illuminated a cardboard packet of tintacks evidently left there by the caretaker, who must have been renovating something or other in honour of the approaching Sabbath. Bram did not hesitate, but forthwith arranged four tintacks on each of the pitch-pine chairs of the eleven apostles and actually half-a-dozen, and these carefully chosen for their length and sharpness, on the marble chair of the chief apostle himself. For once in a way he should look forward to Sunday morning; for the first time in his life he should be able to encounter with relish the smell of veils and varnish in Bethesda. Of course, it would be too much to hope that all the fifty tintacks would strike home, but the chances were good for a generous proportion of successes, because it was the custom of the twelve apostles to march in from the apostolic snuggery and simultaneously take their seats with the precision of the parade-ground. While Bram was having to stand up and listen to a long pi-jaw that night on his return, he nearly laughed aloud in thinking that to-morrow morning in Bethesda his father who occupied at present the chair of James the Less would wish that he was standing too. Before going to bed Bram went to wish good night to his grandmother and thank her for the way she had helped him. “I wish I could travel round the world, grandmamma.” “Ah, child, be glad that you can still have wishes. It’s when all your wishes turn to regrets that you can begin sobbing. Here am I, with only one wish left.” “What’s that?” “The grave,” said the old lady. Bram was startled when his grandmother said this with such simple earnestness. Death presented itself to his young mind as something so fantastically remote that thus to speak of it as within the scope of a practical wish seemed to demand some kind of distraction to cure such excitability. “You never go to Bethesda, do you, grandmamma?” She laughed and shook her head. “I wish you’d come to-morrow morning.”