Ralph smiled. The smile transfigured his face, even as the same sort of smile transfigured the faces of the martyrs of old time, beginning with Stephen. "I care not how long I live," he replied. "The only care I have now is to be true to my convictions, true to my God." The telephone rang at that instant. "Excuse me one moment, Mr. Apleon," he said, turning to the instrument. There followed a few moments exchanges on the 'phone, then replacing the receiver he turned. But his visitor was gone. "That's curious!" he muttered. "I did not hear a sound of his going, any more than I did of his coming. Uncanny, eerie, creepy, almost!" There was a tap at the door. "Come in!" he called. The messenger boy, Charley, entered with a sheaf of proof galleys. "Did you see that tall gentleman pass out, Charley?" he asked. "Did he go down stairs, or into one of the other offices?" "Tall gennelman, sir? There aint bin no one come along this way, sir, nobody couldn't pass my little hutch wivout me a seein' on 'em. I ain't been out no wheres, an' I knows no one aint come by--least ways, not this way, not past my place." "If any tall gentleman does come up, Charley, show him in to me, at once please." Ralph had had time, during Charley's extended answer, to recover himself from the amaze that the boy's first sentence has produced in him. "That's all, Charley!" he added, turning to his desk. The boy gave him a curious, puzzled look, lingered for the fraction of a second, then slowly turned and left the office. When the door had closed behind him, Ralph, who had _felt_ all that had passed in that moment of the boy's hesitancy, though he had purposely refrained from looking up, lifted his head and glanced around him. "If I did not know better," he murmured, "I should suppose that the whole incident was but a dream, or hallucination." A perplexed look filled his face, as he continued: "What does it all mean?" Again, in a flash, the memory of that Judas sermon swept back over him, and the startling statement recurred to him "Somewhere, even as I have preached of him, and as you have listened, there is, I believe, a young man of noble stature, exceedingly attractive, wealthy, fascinating, bewitching in fact, since 'all the world will wonder after him'--yes, somewhere in the world, perhaps in this very city where we are now gathered, is the young man who, presently, when our Lord has come, when the Church, and the Holy Spirit are gone, will manifest himself as the Anti-christ." Coming back at this particular moment, Ralph asked himself: "Is Lucien Apleon the Anti-christ?" He paused an instant, then, as a sudden startling sense of assurance of the fact swept into his soul he cried: "He is! I have seen the Anti-christ!" For nearly an hour he sat on his chair, his mind wrapped in deep thought, and occasionally referring to a book of prophecy which Tom Hammond had evidently deeply studied.