In the absorbing interest of his first mission to the East Spence had found work which exactly suited his temperament. It was work which keyed him up to his best and most successful efforts. But when that was over, when the news that he had given brilliantly to the world became the world's and was no longer his, then the reaction set in. The whole man became relaxed and unstrung; he was drifting into a sloth of the mind and body when Gortre had arrived from the North with his message of Hope. The renewed opportunity of action, the tonic to his weak and waning faith--that faith which alone was able to keep him clean and worthy--again strung up the chords of his manhood till they vibrated in harmony. Once more Spence was in the Holy City. But a short time ago he was at Jerusalem as the collective eye of millions of Englishmen, the telegraph wires stretched out behind him to London. Now he was, to all official intents, a private person, yet, as the steamer cast anchor in the roadstead of Jaffa, he had realised that a more tremendous responsibility than ever before rested with him. The last words spoken to Spence in England had been those of Sir Michael Manichoe. The great man was bidding him good-bye at Charing Cross. "Remember," he had said, "that whatever proof or help we may get from this woman, Gertrude Hunt, will be but the basis for you to work on in the East. We shall cable every result of our investigations here. Remember that, as we think, you have immense ability and resource against you. Go very warily. As I have said before, _no_ sum is too great to sacrifice, no sacrifice too great to make." There had been a day's delay at Jaffa. It had been a day of strange, bewildering thoughts to the journalist. The "Gate of the Holy Land" is not, as many people suppose, a fine harbour, a thronged port. The navies of the ancient world which congregated there were smaller than even the coasting steamers of to-day. They found shelter in a narrow space of more or less untroubled water between the shelving rock of the long, flat shore and a low reef rising out of the sea parallel to the town. The vessels with timber for Solomon's Temple tossed almost unsheltered before the terraces of ochre-coloured Oriental houses. For several hours it had been too rough for the passengers on the French boat to land. More than a mile of restless bottle-green sea separated them from the rude ladders fastened to the wave-washed quay. There had been one of the heavy rain-storms which at that season of the year visit Palestine. Over the Moslem minarets of the town the purple tops of the central mountains of Judah and Ephraim showed clear and far away. The time of waiting gave Spence an opportunity for collecting and ordering his thoughts, for summing up the situation and trying to get at the very heart of its meaning.