Then fiends’ voices began to urge him to give up: mocking fiends who jeered at his obsolete notions of right and wrong: practical fiends who would have had him cease a vain endeavor to keep up an impossible standard of morality, and from thenceforth pander to the depraved taste of the public; shrewd fiends who argued plausibly enough that his health was breaking down and that it was high time to yield. Macneillie with an effort roused himself and for a while baffled them by taking a brisk walk; it was cold and wet and dreary but the exercise was a relief and by the time he had reached the Seaforth Sands he had regained his composure. The struggle was for the time over, but existence looked to him as wretched, as cheerless, as that wild desolate country at the entrance to the Mersey. The rain too began to come down remorselessly, and he made his way to the station of the electric railway and returned by the docks to the city. As he was walking along Church Street he chanced to come across Ralph’s friend George Mowbray. “I am just going to the Art Gallery,” he observed. “Bicycling is hopeless to-day, the tires do nothing but slip.” “I’ll come with you,” said Macneillie, not because he cared in the least to see the pictures, but from sheer dread of having spare time on his hands. He had never before contrived to see the Walker Art Gallery and as he wandered drearily round the place, seeing yet hardly heeding the treasures it contains, his attention was at length arrested by Poynter’s well-known picture “Faithful unto Death.” He was of course familiar with the story of the sentinel of Pompeii whose skeleton was discovered, hundreds of years later, standing on guard at his gate. But he never realised till he saw that picture how awful must have been the man’s temptation to escape and save himself as all the rest were doing. Behind him were only two or three flying figures, most of the citizens must already have fled; but before him, and drawing very near, was the awful lurid glow which meant certain death. The sentinel stood facing it, he was perfectly upright, perfectly calm, only in the strong tension of the muscles of the hand one could see how instinctively he gripped the sword which could now avail him nothing. In his dilated eyes there was no abject terror but a great awe, an intensely human look of dread of the swiftly approaching fiery foe. It would have been an easy thing to desert his post and disobey orders. Had it ever come into his mind as he gazed across the campagna to Vesuvius that self preservation was permissible under such circumstances? That a soldier need not always obey his captain’s orders? Perhaps it had, but nevertheless he had stood firm and had died in what no doubt seemed a useless fashion, out of reverence to mere law, never dreaming that his example would give courage and strength to millions of people in the ages to come.