Filled with a new, a greater life, he found himself, without knowing it, on the village green. And then in a flash, as he came to the priest’s stone, the angle of the spectrum shifted again. He was pierced by the recognition of a great presence. A voice, faint, far off, yet clear as the sound of flowing water, touched his ear with such ecstasy that he looked around to see whence it came. A sky gloriously burnished with the presence of God alone could have winged it; and as he looked up, came the words: “And, lo, the heavens opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.” Thrilled by a joy which was half fear, the vicar leaned against the stone. And as he did so a rush of wild thoughts swept his mind like a tide. His eyes grew dark as he saw again a summer twilight and a frail figure of fantasy kneeling upon the spot to which he was now rooted. In a series of pictures, a terrible and strange scene was reënacted. A motor car glided stealthily past the door of the widow’s cottage; it came round the bend of the road; as it stopped by the edge of the green, two heavy somber men descended from it, and from his own base ambush, but a few yards off, he saw them cautiously approach the kneeling figure. Again he was the witness of the acts and the words that passed. He saw the figure rise as they came up; he heard the greeting of the calm, expecting voice: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Again he saw the grim procession move across the grass, he saw the upward gesture to the God in the sky, which at the moment had revolted him; and then he saw the car stealthily turn the bend in the track and fade among the dark-glowing gorse. A nausea came upon the vicar. Sick with sudden terror, he realized what he had done. To the fate which his own boy could not face and had been allowed, as a crowning mercy, to escape, he had himself condemned a fellow creature without a hearing, and perhaps against the weight of evidence. By what authority had he immured a fellow citizen in a living tomb? By what authority had he denied the first and highest of all sanctions to a human soul? The doom that his own poor lad, with all his heroism, had not the superhuman courage to meet, this defenseless villager had embraced in the spirit of a martyr and a saint. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Again the vicar saw him rise from his knees, and with a wan but happy smile go forth to a fate by comparison with which the grave was very kind. Overborne by a sudden passion of illogical remorse, the vicar sank to his own knees by the stone, on a spot bare of grass, the fruit, perhaps, of John Smith’s many kneelings in many bygone years. Broken and bereaved, a lone animal wounded and terrified, he humbly asked that he might be allowed to meet his wife and his boy in Heaven.