And Joe, sitting unmoved, with his hands upon the wheel, turned to see why his master delayed. Wayne crouched in the open door of the tonneau, his broad shoulders filling the opening, his cap on the back of his head, gazing upon a spectacle with which he had been familiar from childhood; but to-night it took new hold of him. To these “singed and scorched” beings, the shadows against the flame, Jim Paddock was giving his life. “Go on, Joe!” he shouted, and slammed the door. CHAPTER XIII JEAN MORLEY The parish house of St. Luke’s was a remodeled two-story business block adjoining the frame church. One of the store-rooms had been cut in two, half of it serving as a reading-room for men; the rest of it was used as a _crèche_ where young children were looked after at hours when their mothers were too busy to care for them. The other half of the building served as an assembly room on occasions and here the exercises of the evening were already in progress when Wayne arrived. At one end of the room a ring had been improvised and within the roped enclosure a string quartet was playing a waltz to which the feet of a considerable portion of the audience kept time. The place was packed and Wayne stood until the end of the number sandwiched between two labourers who had paused on their way home. Their faces were still grimy; their dinner-pails rubbed Wayne’s legs democratically. A prestidigitator followed the quartet with a series of sleight-of-hand tricks. He was a young Italian and was warmly applauded by representatives of his race in the audience. A young woman sang a popular ballad, the pastoral note of whose refrain, “In the woodland, by the river, I await my love, my own,” was plaintively incongruous in the place.