Wayne’s presence was accepted as a matter of course; no particular importance attached to him as a guest, and he had not for a long time felt so wholly at ease as among these young priests, whose aims were utterly different from any idea he had ever entertained of religious work. There were only ten of them and they had assembled for a period of rest and discussion with their leader before separating to continue their work in various parts of the country immediately after Christmas. One of the brothers who particularly attracted Wayne had been a sailor. He had spent his summers sailing in coastwise ships to earn his way through college. Another had been a ranchman in Colorado and was to leave shortly for work in Montana. At the end of the meal as at the beginning they stood in their places and recited prayers, making the sign of the cross. All but Stoddard, the Superior, went about their affairs at once. He asked his guests into the library, a comfortable lounging room where they continued the talk of the table until a brother appeared to carry Paddock to the station. Wayne rode down with them, returning to what seemed to be a deserted house; but as he stood uncertainly in the hall he heard from the little oratory the deep voice of Stoddard reciting compline. He went to the door and peered in upon the brothers at prayer. The room was quite dark and there were no lights for this service on the tiny altar. Stoddard’s voice boomed through the little chapel; the kneeling priests in the rough choir stalls responded in the antiphonals with deep, hearty voices. There was nothing spectacular or theatrical in the scene; the setting was too bare for this; and these men, Wayne reflected, were seriously commending their souls to the mercy and protection of a God in whom he did not believe. He went out into the night and followed the rough road that climbed farther into the mountains, pausing now and then, where breaks in the woodland offered clear, moonlit vistas, to gaze across the valley to the hills beyond. In the depression following his latest plunge into the depths, while his head ached and his hands shook, a dark thought had crossed his mind and it came back upon him now. A slip on the edge of one of these iron crags and he would crash into oblivion, and that would be the end of his troubles. If Paddock had lodged him here with the idea that he might be won to a belief in religion he had made a stupid blunder. The religion of emotion might in certain circumstances have appealed to Wayne Craighill, but the religion of service as practised by Stoddard and Paddock struck him as vain and futile.