And over all the vast of London lay the monster, filling it like the night--not in churches and chapels only--in almost all theatres, and most houses--most of all in rich houses: everywhere he had a foot, a tail, a tentacle or two--everywhere suckers that drew the life-blood from the sickening and somnolent soul. When the deacon, a little brown man, about five-and-thirty, had ended his prayer, he read another hymn of the same sort--one of such as form the bulk of most collections, and then looked meaningly at Mr Graham, whom he had seen in the chapel on Sunday with his brother deacon, and therefore judged one of consequence, who had come to the meeting with an object, and ought to be propitiated: he had intended speaking himself. After having thus for a moment regarded him, “Would you favour us with a word of exhortation, sir?” he said, in a stage-like whisper. Now the monster had by this time insinuated a hair-like sucker into the heart of the schoolmaster, and was busy. But at the word, as the Red-Cross Knight when he heard Orgoglio in the wood staggered to meet him, he rose at once, and although his umbrella slipped and fell with a loud discomposing clatter, calmly approached the reading desk. To look at his outer man, this knight of the truth might have been the very high priest of the monster which, while he was sitting there, had been twisting his slimy, semi-electric, benumbing tendrils around his heart. His business was nevertheless to fight him, though to fight him in his own heart and that of other people at one and the same moment, he might well find hard work. And the loathly worm had this advantage over the knight, that it was the first time he had stood up to speak in public since his failure thirty years ago. That hour again for a moment overshadowed his spirit. It was a wavy harvest morning in a village of the north. A golden wind was blowing, and little white clouds flying aloft in the sunny blue. The church was full of well-known faces, upturned, listening, expectant, critical. The hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over all dead hopes, and write _Te Deums_ on their coffin-lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon prayed his; but there had come to him no reviving--no message for this handful of dull souls--there were nine of them in all --and his own soul crouched hard and dull within his bosom. How to give them one deeper breath? How to make them know they were alive? Whence was his aid to come?