It is no use. We cannot get away, try as we will, from the fact of God, and we cannot also get away from the fact of the Incarnation, when God revealed Himself more fully than ever before, and when God Himself became Man. My idea in this story is to show that, by means of processes of which we have at present but little idea, a man may be drained and emptied, under special circumstances, of himself and the influences of his past life, and be made as a vessel for the special in-pouring of the Holy Spirit. The death of Lluellyn Lys for Joseph, the mysterious interplay of a soul going, and meeting on its way, another soul about to go into the Unknown, aided by the special dispensation of God, might, I think, well produce some such supernormal being as the Joseph of this tale. Perhaps an angel, one of those mysterious beings--whom Christians believe to be the forces and the messengers of God--may have animated Joseph in his mission, without entirely destroying or obscuring his personality. Be this as it may, I offer this story as an effort to attract my readers' minds towards a consideration of the Unseen which is all around us, and which--more probably than not--is the real world, after all, and one in which we, as we are now, walk as phantoms and simulacrums of what we shall one day be in the glorious hereafter. GUY THORNE. The Angel CHAPTER I AND GOD SPAKE---- Two men stood outside a bird-fancier's shop in the East End of London. The shop was not far from the docks, and had a great traffic with sailors. Tiny emerald and gamboge love-birds squawked in their cages, there was a glass box of lizards with eyes like live rubies set in the shop window, while a hideous little ape--chained to a hook--clattered in an impish frenzy. Outside the shop door hung a cage containing a huge parrot, and it was this at which the two men were looking. Hampson, a little wrinkled man in very shabby clothes, but of a brave and confident aspect, pointed to the parrot. "I wonder if it talks?" he said. Immediately upon his words the grey bird, its watchful eye gleaming with mischievous fire, began a stream of disconnected words and sentences, very voluble, very rapid, and very clear. Hampson shuddered. "Do you know, Joseph," he said, "I am always afraid when I hear that sound--that noise of a bird talking human words. To me, there is no more dreadful sound in the world." Hampson's companion, a taller and much more considerable man, looked at the little fellow with surprise. "Afraid?" he said. "Why should you be afraid? The sound is grotesque, and nothing more. Has hunger completed her work, and privation conquered at last? Are your nerves going?"