Here all the turmoil of the world beyond was ignored. It seemed as though nothing had ever been heard of the thing that was shaking the world. The pastor preached and prayed, the men and women answered with deep, groaning "Amens." It all mattered nothing to them. They heeded it no more than the wailing wind in the cove. The voice of Christ was not stilled in the hearts of this little congregation of the Faithful. This chilled the recluse. He could find no meaning or comfort in it. That evening he heard the daughter of the coast-guard with whom he lodged singing. It was a wild night, and Hands was sitting by the fire in his little sitting-room. Outside the wind and rain and waves were shouting furiously in the dark. The girl was playing a few simple chords on the harmonium and singing to them. "For ever with the Lord." An untuneful voice, louder than need be, but with what conviction! Hands tried to fix his attention on the newspaper which he held. He read that in Rhodesia the mine capitalists were moving for slavery pure and simple. It was proposed openly that slavery should be the penalty for law-breaking for natives. This was the only way, it asserted, by which the labour problem in South Africa could be solved. "Life from the dead is in that word, 'Tis immortality." It seemed that there was small opposition to this proposal. It would be the best thing for the Kaffir, perhaps, this wise and kindly discipline. So the proposal was wrapped up. "And nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home." Hands saw that, quite suddenly, the _old horror of slavery had disappeared_. This, too, was coming, then? This old horror which Christians had banished from the world? "So when my latest breath Shall rend the veil in twain." Hands started. His thoughts came back to the house in which he sat. The girl's voice touched him immeasurably. He heard it clearly in a lull of the storm. Then another tremendous gust of wind drowned it. Two great tears rolled down his cheeks. It was midnight, and all the people in the house were long since asleep, when Hands picked up the last of his newspapers. It was Saturday's edition of the _London Daily Mercury_, the powerful rival of the _Wire_. A woman who had been to Penzance market had brought it home for him, otherwise he would have had to wait for it until the Monday morning. He gazed wearily round the homely room. Weariness, that was what lay heavy over mind and body--an utter weariness. The firelight played upon the crude pictures, the simple ornaments, the ship worked in worsted when the coast-guard was a boy in the Navy, the shells from a Pacific island, a model gun under a glass shade. But his thoughts were not prisoned by these humble walls and the humble room in which he sat. He heard the groaning of the peoples of the world, the tramp of armies, the bitter cry of souls from whom hope had been plucked for ever.