Suddenly his calm, tense eloquence became touched with passion. His pale face gleamed, and his eyes were lit with an inward fire. Gesture and tone moved to the beat of a deeper and more subtle rhetoric. He was pleading for those whose sin beat about in their bosoms and lay like a dark shadow across all the sweet places of life. Passionate and more passionate he grew. He was pleading--for whom? We listened entranced. His terrible earnestness passed like an electric thrill into the hearts of all of us. Several women were crying softly; men sat there with bowed heads, face to face with ghosts long since buried. Bruce Deville was sitting back in his corner with folded arms and downcast head. Adelaide Fortress was looking steadfastly up towards that pale, inspired figure, with soft, wet eyes. Even the Bishop was deeply moved, and was listening to every word. For my part there was a great lump in my throat. The sense of some terrible reality behind my father’s impassioned words had left me pale and trembling. A subtle sense of excitement stole through the church. When he paused for a moment before his concluding sentence, there was something almost like a murmur amongst the congregation, followed by another period of breathless suspense. In the midst of that deep hush a faint sound attracted me. My seat was on a level with the open door, and I glanced out. A man was leaning against the porch--a man in very grievous condition. His clothes were disordered and torn, and there was a great stain on the front of his coat. I alone had gazed away from the preacher in the pulpit towards him, and whilst I looked the sound which had first attracted me was repeated. A low, faint moan, scarcely louder than a whisper, passed between his lips. He stood there supporting himself with his hands against the wall. His lined face was turned towards me, and, with a thrill of horror, I recognized him. I half rose from my seat. The man was either ill or dying. He seemed to be making frantic signs to me. I tried my utmost to signal to Mr. Charlsworth, but, like all the rest, his eyes seemed riveted upon the pulpit. Before I could leave my seat, or attract any one’s attention, he had staggered through the door into the church itself. He stood leaning upon a vacant chair, a wild, disordered object, with blood stains upon his hands and clothes, and his dark eyes red and gleaming fiercely beneath his wind-tossed mass of black hair. So fascinated was the congregation that save myself only one or two stray people had noticed him. He stood amongst the shadows, and only I, to whom his profile appeared against the background of the open door, was able to mark the full and terrible disorder of his person. And while I waited, numb with some nameless fear, the preacher’s voice rang once more through the building, and men and women bowed their heads before the sweet, lingering passion of those sad words.