Francis read this effusion and was hurt by it. Since he had thumped his brother William on the nose he had quarrelled with no man and deliberately hurt none. Behind the wild writing he could feel the torment, and he was sorry. He felt that he was to a certain extent to blame because he had invited the man to his church in a challenging spirit, and so had perhaps increased prejudice in him. He tried to write to Flynn but could find nothing to say. As he sifted his thoughts he could only discover that he wished his church to be free. All sorts and conditions of men were free to come and free to stay away. He had once found one of his sidesmen turning a ragged old beggar-woman out, and had reproved him and led the old woman to a pew. She spat on the floor and sat fingering an old clay-pipe, but, to Francis's way of thinking, these things might not be unacceptable to the God he honoured, however distasteful they might be to human creatures. The church, then, was free, and Francis desired only to make it pleasing and attractive to those who came to it, to have it a place of beauty amid so much ugliness. The Saturday before Easter had been one of the happiest he ever remembered--a day of hard work in the church, surrounded with young people all gay and blithe and busy with the flowers and draperies and vestments. One such day, he felt, could do much to redeem the waste and folly of years. However, it was all odious and disgusting to Flynn, and Francis sighed as he reached out for his tin of bird's-eye and filled his pipe. The parrot scrambled out of its cage, shuffled along the floor and climbed up the back of his chair, perched on his shoulders, and stood combing its beak through his beard. V HOSTILITIES _Thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me; thou hast delivered me from the violent man._ PSALM xviii. 48. THE dead play a not altogether disproportionate part in the affairs of the living. There are so many more of them. The thought would be desperate but for the reflection that in all probability the most numerous of all are the unborn. The Creator may at any moment get tired of the eternal monotonous repetition of birth and death, but no man or woman will ever believe that. We get joy out of it, and His is the sum of all our joy--the dead, the living, and the unborn.