"I've been waiting for this moment for years," he said; "you don't know how I've watched you Sunday after Sunday strutting about this lovely place, happy in your own conceit. Your very pride has been an insult to the God you pretend to serve. I don't know whether there's a God or no-- there can't be, or things wouldn't happen as they do--but there _is_ this place, alive, wonderful, beautiful, triumphant, and you've dared to put yourself above it.... "I could have shouted for joy last night when I heard what your young hopeful had done. 'That's right,' I said; 'that'll bring him down a bit. That'll teach him modesty.' I had an extra drink on the strength of it. I've been hanging about all the morning to get a chance of speaking to you. I followed you up here. You're one of us now, Archdeacon. You're down on the ground at last, but not so low as you will be before the Cathedral has finished with you." "Go," said Brandon, "or, House of God though this is, I'll throw you out." "I'll go. I've said my say for the moment. But we'll meet again, never fear. You're one of us now--one of us. Good-night." He passed through the door, and the dusky room was still again as though no one had been there.... There is an old German tale, by De la Motte Fouque, I fancy, of a young traveller who asks his way to a certain castle, his destination. He is given his directions, and his guide tells him that the journey will be easy enough until he reaches a small wood through which he must pass. This wood will be dark and tangled and bewildering, but more sinister than those obstacles will be the inhabitants of it who, evil, malign, foul and bestial, devote their lives to the destruction of all travellers who endeavour to reach the castle on the hill beyond. And the tale tells how the young traveller, proud of his youth and strength, confident in the security of his armour, nevertheless, when he crosses the dark border of the wood, feels as though his whole world has changed, as though everything in which he formerly trusted is of no value, as though the very weapons that were his chief defence now made him most defenceless. He has in the heart of that wood many perilous adventures, but worst of them all, when he is almost at the end of his strength, is the sudden conviction that he has himself changed, and is himself become one of the foul, gibbering, half-visioned monsters by whom he is surrounded.