In the broken story which Dylks told, Braile had the air of mentally checking off the successive facts, and he permitted the man a measure of self-pity, though he caught him up at the close. “Well, you've got a part of what you deserve, but as usually happens with us rascals, you've got too much, at the same time. And what did Nancy advise?” “She told me to come to you--” “What did Nancy _advise_?” the Squire repeated savagely. “She advised me to stop all this”--he waved his hands outward, and the Squire nodded intelligently--“to tell them it wasn't true; and I was sorry; and to go away--” He stopped, and Braile demanded, “Well, and are you going to do it?” “I want to do it, and--I can't.” “You can't? What's to hinder you?” “I'm afraid to do it.” “Afraid?” “They would kill me, if I did.” “They? Who? The Herd of the Lost?” “The Little Flock.” The men were both silent, and then after a long breath, the Squire said, “I begin to see--” “No, no! You don't _begin_ to see, Squire Braile.” Dylks burst out sobbing, and uttering what he said between his sobs. “Nobody can understand it that hasn't been through it! How you are tempted on, step by step, all so easy, till you can't go back, you can't stop. You're tempted by what's the best thing in you, by the hunger and thirst to know what's going to be after you die; to get near to the God that you've always heard about and read about; near Him in the flesh, and see Him and hear Him and touch Him. That's what does it with _them_, and that's what does it in you. It's something, a kind of longing, that's always been in the world, and you know it's in others because you know it's in you, in your own heart, your own soul. When you begin to try for it, to give out that you're a prophet, an apostle, you don't have to argue, to persuade anybody, or convince anybody. They're only too glad to believe what you say from the first word; and if you tell them you're Christ, didn't He always say He would come back, and how do they know but what it's now and you?” “Yes, yes,” the Squire said. “Go on.” “When I said I was God, they hadn't a doubt about it. But it was then that the trouble began.” “The trouble?” “I had to make some of them saints. I had to make Enraghty Saint Paul, and I had to make Hingston Saint Peter. You think I had to lie to them, to deceive them, to bewitch them. I didn't have to do anything of the kind. They did the lying and deceiving and bewitching themselves, and when they done it, they and all the rest of the believers, they had me fast, faster than I had them.” “I could imagine the schoolmaster hanging on to his share of the glory, tooth and nail,” the Squire said with a grim laugh. “But old Hingston, good old soul, he ought to have let go, if you wanted him to.” “Oh, you don't know half of it,” Dylks said, with a fresh burst of sobbing. “The worst of it is, and the dreadfulest is, that you begin to believe it yourself.” “What's that?” the Squire demanded sharply.