On the other hand, the Bethel was crowded, and by this time it was raining hard. The air was thick with the steaming of damp clothes. The lamps shuddered and smoked in the draught of the rising wind, and the big, blinded windows were running down with rain, as if they wept for the destruction of the chapel weed.... Never had the Rev. Mr. Sumption such a congregation. Nearly the whole of Sunday Street jostled in the pews. Instead of the meagre peppering of heads, there were tight rows of them, like peas in pods. All the Beatups were there, except Nell, who had stayed at home to look after the house; even Mus’ Beatup had hobbled over on his stick. The Putlands were there, and Mrs. Bill Putland, and the Sindens and the Bourners and the Hubbles. Thyrza had come, with little Will asleep in her arms—she sat near the back, in case she should have to take him out. The Hollowbones had come from the Foul Mile and the Kadwells from Stilliands Tower; there were Collbrans from Satanstown, Viners from Puddledock, Ades from Bodle Street, and even stragglers from Brownbread Street and Dallington. Most of them had never been in the Bethel before, and it struck them as unaccountable mean, with its smoking lamps and windows flapping with dingy blinds, its pews that smelled of wood-rot, and its walls all peeled and scarred with moisture and decay. There was a rustle and scrape as Mr. Sumption came in, through the little door behind the pulpit. Then there was silence as he stood looking down, apparently unmoved, on what must have been to him an extraordinary sight—his church crowded, full to the doors, as he had so often dreamed, but never seen. He looked pale and languid, and his eyes were like smoky lanterns. His voice also seemed to have lost its ring as he gave out the number of the psalm, and then in the prayer which followed it. Moreover, though the congregation, being mostly new, shuffled and kicked its heels disgracefully, he thumped at no one. “Pore soul, he shudn’t ought to have tried it,” thought Thyrza to herself in her corner. “He’ll never get through.” After the prayer, which was astonishingly nerveless for a prayer of Mr. Sumption’s, came a hymn, during which the minister sat in the pulpit, his hand over his face. Those in the front rows saw his jaws work as if he was praying. People whispered behind their Bibles—“He’s different, surelye—just lik a Church parson to-night.” “Reckon it’s changed him—knocked all the beans out of him, as you might say.” “Pore chap, he looks middling tired—reckon he finds this a tar’ble job.” Then the singing stopped, and Mr. Sumption stood up, wearily turning over the leaves of his big Bible. “Brethren, you will find my text in the Eleventh of John, the fiftieth verse: ‘It is expedient that one man should die for the people.’” 9