horse went lame or spoiled his knees, he called him in at once. That ought to have shown him. He was not a minister but a farrier, and the people of Sunday Street knew it, and treated him accordingly. He lay with his face hidden against the grass. It seemed as if his life had stopped like a watch, leaving him, like a stopped watch, still in being. Jerry, the centre and spring of his existence for twenty years, was gone; his ministry was gone—he could not go back after what had happened, and no brethren would call him elsewhere. He could not stay on at Sunday Street or return to the forge at Bethersden. Here he was, past middle age, without friends, without kin, without livelihood, without resources of any kind. He saw himself alone in a world burning and crashing to ruin, a world that bristled with the crosses of martyred boys and was black with the dead hopes of their fathers. A sob broke from him, but without tears. His being seemed dried up. The horror of thick darkness was upon him, of this blasted world rocking and staggering to the pit, of the flame which devoured all, good and bad, elect and damned, wheat and weeds. Who could endure to the end of this Judgment? Who hoped to be saved? All was burnt up, dried, and blasted. The day of the Lord had come indeed and had consumed him like a dry stick. “My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. “I am counted with them that go down into the pit. “Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more. “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast vexed me with thy waves. “Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. “Lover and friend hast thou put from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” 13 His hands clenched on the young grass, slowly dragging out bunches of tender, growing things. He began to smell the sweetness of their roots, of the soil that clung to them—moist, full of sap and growth, of inevitable rebirth. These budding, springing things, growing out of deadness into life and warmth, suddenly gave him a little piteous thrill of joy, which broke into his despair like a trickle of rain into dry sods. The earth seemed to hold a steadfast hope in her stillness and strength, in her scent and moisture and green life struggling out of death.... Those boys who had cast themselves down on the earth to die, perhaps they had found this hope ... perhaps disgraced Jerry slept with it. No man, no blood-lusty power, could cheat them of it, for even bodies blown into a thousand pieces the earth takes into her kind stillness and makes them whole in union with herself.