Now Alf had a spot upon his soul. He, too, possessed a weakness of a sort that Civilization in its kindest mood covers except in times of extraordinary and brutal stress. "I know _just_ what you're doing for me, Alf," said Ernie quietly. "Let's have no more of it, see, or I'll bloody well bash you!" There was no question that Ernie meant what he said. Easy-going though he was, all his life he had been subject to these sudden eruptions which flooded the sunny and somnolent landscape with white-hot lava; as his brother knew to his cost of old. Alf put his hand up as though he had been already bashed. "Ow!" he gasped, "Ow!" and passed on swiftly. That evening he went, as was very proper, to see and consult his spiritual director. The origin of the Reverend Spink was known to few. He was in reality the son of a Nonconformist grocer in the North, and had been educated with a view to the ministry. His mother had been a governess, a fact of which her son at the outset of his career was perhaps unduly proud; though later in life, when referring to it, he would say with quite unnecessary ferocity, "And I'm not ashamed of it, eether." After his father's death the superior attraction of what his mother truly called "the church of the gentry" seduced him from his old-time allegiance. With the aid of the local Bishop he was sent to a Theological College, and shortly received what he was fond of naming in militarist moments, "a commission" in the Established Church. He did not like his brother-curates to have been public-schoolmen, and, when asked, would say that he himself had been educated privately. The Archdeacon, who was not jealous of him, spoke of him to those of his staff he considered on his own social level as "dear brother Spink." On the rare occasions when the Lady Augusta Willcocks asked him to supper, he oiled his hair before the great event and prayed fervently for guidance at his bed-side. He was a small man, plump and rather puffy, who wore pince-nez, was spruce in his person, and walked about in a brisk, rather bustling way, as though he could not afford to lose a minute if all the souls waiting for him to save them were to be gathered in. He and Alf were of much the same class if of somewhat different calibre. It was, indeed, from a close observation and imitation of the facial activities of the Reverend Spink at devotion that Alf had been enabled to win the benedictions of the virgins of St. Michael's. Alf now called on his friend and pitched his tale. "Past ope," he said lugubriously. "I'm sorry to say it of any man, let alone me own blood brother. But it's my true belief all the same." "To man, my dear friend," said the Reverend Spink, rising heavenward on his toes with a splendid smile, "much is impossible. Not so to Go-urd." Alf looked into the fire very religiously. Then he nodded his head and said after an impressive pause,