Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands with more than her usual studious complacence. "My dear," she said at last, "no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have--but I've observed that he usually knows what he's about." "Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!" There was a swift little warmth in her tones--"but he says he can't do otherwise. He's going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a piece of mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see how _great_ he is, Aunt Bell. Do you know--there have been times when I've misjudged Allan. I didn't know his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession to its people." Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen. "Perhaps he will have his reward," she said. "Although it is many years since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, I have faith in Allan, in his--well, his psychic nature is so perfectly attuned with the Universal that Allan simply _cannot_ harm himself. Even when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead. So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding the thought of success for him. I think Allan will attend very acceptably to the mere details." CHAPTER VI THE WALLS OF ST. ANTIPAS FALL AT THE THIRD BLAST On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward--the pew of Cyrus Browett--looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas--she could see the relentless profile of their chief at her right--be offended by his rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. Like Luther, he must stand there to say out the soul of him, and she was prostrate before his brave greatness. When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the parable, her heart beat as if it would be out to him, her face paled and hardened with the strain of his ordeal. "And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and was buried. "And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. "And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'