On that Friday evening, about half-past six o'clock, Archdeacon Brandon, just as he reached the top of the High Street, saw God.

There was nothing either strange or unusual about this. Having had all his life the conviction that he and God were on the most intimate of terms, that God knew and understood himself and his wants better than any other friend that he had, that just as God had definitely deputed him to work out certain plans on this earth, so, at times, He needed his own help and advice, having never wavered for an instant in the very simplest tenets of his creed, and believing in every word of the New Testament as though the events there recorded had only a week ago happened in his own town under his own eyes--all this being so, it was not strange that he should sometimes come into close and actual contact with his Master.

It may be said that it was this very sense of contact, continued through long years of labour and success, that was the original foundation of the Archdeacon's pride. If of late years that pride had grown from the seeds of the Archdeacon's own self-confidence and appreciation, who can blame him?

We translate more easily than we know our gratitude to God into our admiration of ourselves.

Over and over again in the past, when he had been labouring with especial fervour, he was aware that, in the simplest sense of the word, God was "walking with him." He was conscious of a new light and heat, of a fresh companionship; he could almost translate into physical form that comradeship of which he was so tenderly aware. How could it be but that after such an hour he should look down from those glorious heights upon his other less favoured fellow-companions? No merit of his own that he had been chosen, but the choice had been made.

On this evening he was in sad need of comfort. Never in all his past years had life gone so hardly with him as it was going now. It was as though, about three or four months back, he had, without knowing it, stepped into some new and terrible country. One feature after another had changed, old familiar faces wore new unfamiliar disguises, every step that he took now seemed to be dangerous, misfortune after misfortune had come to him, at first slight and even ludicrous, at last with Falk's escape, serious and bewildering. Bewildering! That was the true word to describe his case! He was like a man moving through familiar country and overtaken suddenly by a dense fog. Through it all, examine it as minutely as he might, he could not see that he had committed the slightest fault.

He had been as he had always been, and yet the very face of the town was changed to him, his son had left him, even his wife, to whom he had been married for twenty years, was altered. Was it not natural, therefore, that he should attribute all of this to the only new element that had been introduced into his life during these last months, to the one human being alive who was his declared enemy, to the one man who had openly, in the public road, before witnesses, insulted him, to the man who, from the first moment of his coming to Polchester, had laughed at him and mocked and derided him?

To Ronder! To Ronder! The name was never out of his brain now, lying there, stirring, twisting in his very sleep, sneering, laughing even in the heart of his private prayers.

He was truly in need of God that evening, and there, at the top of the High Street, he saw Him framed in all the colour and glow and sparkling sunlight of the summer evening, filling him with warmth and new courage, surrounding him, enveloping him in love and tenderness.

Cynics might say that it was because the Archdeacon, no longer so young as he had been, was blown by his climb of the High Street and stood, breathing hard for a moment before he passed into the Precincts, lights dancing before his eyes as they will when one is out of breath, the ground swaying a little under the pressure of the heart, the noise of the town rocking in the ears.

That is for the cynics to say. Brandon knew; his experiences had been in the past too frequent for him, even now, to make a mistake.

Running down the hill went the High Street, decorated now with flags and banners in honour of the great event; cutting the sky, stretching from Brent's the haberdasher's across to Adams' the hairdresser's, was a vast banner of bright yellow silk stamped in red letters with "Sixty Years Our Queen. God Bless Her!"

Just beside the Archdeacon, above the door of the bookshop where he had once so ignominiously taken refuge, was a flag of red, white and blue, and opposite the bookseller's, at Gummridge's the stationer's, was a little festoon of flags and a blue message stamped on a white ground: "God Bless Our Queen: Long May She Reign!"

All down the street flags and streamers were fluttering in the little summer breeze that stole about the houses and windows and doors as though anxiously enquiring whether people were not finding the evening just a little too warm.

People were not finding it at all too warm. Every one was out and strolling up and down, laughing and whistling and chattering, dressed, although it was only Friday, in nearly their Sunday best. The shops were closing, one by one, and the throng was growing thicker and thicker. So little traffic was passing that young men and women were already marching four abreast, arm-in-arm, along the middle of the street. It was a long time--ten years, in fact--since Polchester had seen such gaiety.

This was behind the Archdeacon; in front of him was the dark archway in which the grass of the Cathedral square was framed like the mirrored reflection of evening light where the pale blue and pearl white are shadowed with slanting green. The peace was profound--nothing stirred. There in the archway God stood, smiling upon His faithful servant, only as Brandon approached Him passing into shadow and sunlight and the intense blue of the overhanging sky.

Brandon tried then, as he had often tried before, to keep that contact close to himself, but the ecstatic moment had passed; it had lasted, it seemed, on this occasion a shorter time than ever before. He bowed his head, stood for a moment under the arch offering a prayer as simple and innocent as a child offers at its mother's knee, then with an instantaneous change that in a more complex nature could have meant only hypocrisy, but that with him was perfectly sincere, he was in a moment the hot, angry, mundane priest again, doing battle with his enemies and defying them to destroy him.

Nevertheless the transition to-night was not quite so complete as usual. He was unhappy, lonely, and in spite of himself afraid, afraid of he knew not what, as a child might be when its candle is blown out. And with this unhappiness his thoughts turned to home. Falk's departure had caused him to consider his wife more seriously than he had ever done in all their married life before. She had loved Falk; she must be lonely without him, and during these weeks he had been groping in a clumsy baffled kind of way towards some expression to her of the kindness and sympathy that he was feeling.

But those emotions do not come easily after many years of disuse; he was always embarrassed and self-conscious when he expressed affection. He was afraid of her, too, thought that if he showed too much kindness she might suddenly become emotional, fling her arms around him and cover his face with kisses--something of that kind.

Then of late she had been very strange; ever since that Sunday morning when she had refused to go to Communion.... Strange! Women are strange! As different from men as Frenchmen are from Englishmen!

But he would like to-night to come closer to her. Dimly, far within him, something was stirring that told him that it had been his own fault that during all these years she had drifted away from him. He must win her back! A thing easily done. In the Archdeacon's view of life any man had only got to whistle and fast the woman came running!

But to-night he wanted some one to care for him and to tell him that all was well and that the many troubles that seemed to be crowding about him were but imaginary after all.

When he reached the house he found that he had only just time to dress for dinner. He ran upstairs, and then, when his door was closed and he was safely inside his bedroom, he had to pause and stand, his hand upon his heart. How it was hammering! like a beast struggling to escape its cage. His knees, too, were trembling. He was forced to sit down. After all, he was not so young as he had been.

These recent months had been trying for him. But how humiliating! He was glad that there had been no one there to see him. He would need all his strength for the battle that was in front of him. Yes, he was glad that there had been no one to see him. He would ask old Puddifoot to look at him, although the man was an ass. He drank a glass of water, then slowly dressed.

He came downstairs and went into the drawing-room. His wife was there, standing in the shadow by the window, staring out into the Precincts. He came across the room softly to her, then gently put his hand on her shoulder.

She had not heard his approach. She turned round with a sharp cry and then faced him, staring, her eyes terrified. He, on his side, was so deeply startled by her alarm that he could only stare back at her, himself frightened and feeling a strange clumsy foolishness at her alarm.

Broken sentences came from her: "What did you--? Who--? You shouldn't have done that. You frightened me."

Her voice was sharply angry, and in all their long married life together he had never before felt her so completely a stranger; he felt as though he had accosted some unknown woman in the street and been attacked by her for his familiarity. He took refuge, as he always did when he was confused, in pomposity.

"Really, my dear, you'd think I was a burglar. Hum--yes. You shouldn't be so easily startled."

She was still staring at him as though even now she did not realise his identity. Her hands were clenched and her breath came in little hurried gasps as though she had been running.

"No--you shouldn't...silly...coming across the room like that."

"Very well, very well," he answered testily. "Why isn't dinner ready? It's ten minutes past the time."

She moved across the room, not answering him.

Suddenly his pomposity was gone. He moved over to her, standing before her like an overgrown schoolboy, looking at her and smiling uneasily.

"The truth is, my dear," he said, "that I can't conceive my entering a room without everybody hearing it. No, I can't indeed," he laughed boisterously. "You tell anybody that I crossed a room without your hearing it, and they won't believe you. No, they wont."

He bent down and kissed her. His touch tickled her cheek, but she made no movement. He felt, as his hand rested on her shoulder, that she was still trembling.

"Your nerves must be in a bad way," he said. "Why, you're trembling still! Why don't you see Puddifoot?"

"No--no," she answered hurriedly. "It was silly of me----" Making a great effort, she smiled up at him.

"Well, how's everything going?"

"Going?"

"Yes, for the great day. Is everything settled?"

He began to tell her in the old familiar, so boring way, every detail of the events of the last few hours.

"I was just by Sharps' when I remembered that I'd said nothing to Nixon about those extra seats at the back off the nave, so I had to go all the way round----"

Joan came in. His especial need of some one that night, rejected as it had been at once by his wife, turned to his daughter. How pretty she was, he thought, as she came across the room sunlit with the deep evening gold that struck in long paths of light into the darkest shadows and corners.

That moment seemed suddenly the culmination of the advance that they had been making towards one another during the last six months. When she came close to him, he, usually so unobservant, noticed that she, too, was in distress.

She was smiling but she was unhappy, and he suddenly felt that he had been neglecting her and letting her fight her battles alone, and that she needed his love as urgently as he needed hers. He put his arm around her and drew her to him. The movement was so unlike him and so unexpected that she hesitated a little, then happily came closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. They had both, for a moment, forgotten Mrs. Brandon.

"Tired?" he asked Joan.

"Yes. I've been working at those silly old flags all the afternoon. Two of them are not finished now. We've got to go again to-morrow morning."

"Everything ready for the Ball?"

"Yes, my dress is lovely. Oh, mummy, Mrs. Sampson says will you let two relations of theirs sit in our seat on Sunday morning? She hadn't known that they were coming, and she's very bothered about it, and I'll tell her whether they can in the morning."

They both turned and saw Mrs. Brandon, who had gone back to the window and again was looking at the Cathedral, now in deep black shadow.

"Yes, dear. There'll be room. There's only you and I----"

Joan had in the pocket of her dress a letter. As they went in to dinner she could hear its paper very faintly crackle against her hand. It was from Falk and was as follows:

DEAR JOAN--I have written to father but he hasn't answered. Would you find out what he thought about my letter and what he intends to do? I don't mind owning to you that I miss him terribly, and I would give anything just to see him for five minutes. I believe that if he saw me I could win him over. Otherwise I am very happy indeed. We are married and live in two little rooms just off Baker Street. You don't know where that is, do you? Well, it's a very good place to be, near the park, and lots of good shops and not very expensive. Our landlady is a jolly woman, as kind as anything, and I'm getting quite enough work to keep the wolf from the door. I know more than ever now that I've done the right thing, and father will recognise it, too, one day. How is he? Of course my going like that was a great shock to him, but it was the only way to do it. When you write tell me about his health. He didn't seem so well just before I left. Now, Joan, write and tell me everything. One thing is that he's got so much to do that he won't have much time to think about me.--Your affectionate brother,

FALK.

This letter, which had arrived that morning, had given Joan a great deal to think about. It had touched her very deeply. Until now Falk had never shown that he had thought about her at all, and now here he was depending on her and needing her help. At the same time, she had not the slightest guide as to her father's attitude. Falk's name had not been mentioned in the house during these last weeks, and, although she realised that a new relationship was springing up between herself and her father, she was still shy of him and conscious of a deep gulf between them. She had, too, her own troubles, and, try as she might to beat them under, they came up again and again, confronting her and demanding that she should answer them.

Now she put the whole of that aside and concentrated on her father. Watching him during dinner, he seemed to her suddenly to have become older; there was a glow in her heart as she thought that at last he really needed her. After all, if through life she were destined to be an old maid--and that, in the tragic moment of her youth that was now upon her, seemed her inevitable destiny--here was some one for whom at last she could care. She had felt before she came down to dinner that she was old and ugly and desperately unattractive. Across the dinner-table she flung away, as she imagined for ever, all hopes for beauty and charm; she would love her father and he should love her, and every other man in the world might vanish for all that she cared. And had she only known it, she had never before looked so pretty as she did that night. This also she did not know, that her mother, catching a sudden picture of her under the candle-light, felt a deep pang of almost agonising envy. She, making her last desperate bid for love, was old and haggard; the years for her could only add to that age. Her gambler's throw was foredoomed before she had made it.

After dinner, Brandon, as always, retired into the deepest chair in the drawing-room and buried himself in yesterday's Times. He read a little, but the words meant nothing to him. Jubilee! Jubilee! Jubilee! He was sick of the word. Surely they were overdoing it. When the great day itself came every one would be so tired....

He pushed the paper aside and picked up Punch. Here, again, that eternal word--"How to see the Procession. By one who has thought it out. Of course you must be out early. As the traffic...."

JOKE--Jinks: Don't meet you 'ere so often as we used to, Binks, eh?

Binks: Well--no. It don't run to Hopera Box this Season, because, you see, we've took a Window for this 'ere Jubilee.

Then, on one page, "The Walrus and the Carpenter: Jubilee Version." "In Anticipation of the Naval Review." "Two Jubilees?" On the next page an illustration of the Jubilee Walrus. On the next--"Oh, the Jubilee!" On the next, Toby M.P.'s "Essence of Parliament," with a "Reed" drawing of "A Naval Field Battery for the Jubilee."

The paper fell from his hand. During these last days he had had no time to read the paper, and he had fancied, as perhaps every Polcastrian was just then fancying, that the Jubilee was a private affair for Polchester's own private benefit. He felt suddenly that Polchester was a small out-of-the- way place of no account; was there any one in the world who cared whether Polchester celebrated the Jubilee or not? Nobody....

He got up and walked across to the window, pulling the curtains aside and looking out at the deep purple dusk that stained the air like wine. The clock behind him struck a quarter past nine. Two tiny stars, like inquisitive mocking eyes, winked at him above the high Western tower. Moved by an impulse that was too immediate and peremptory to be investigated, he went into the hall, found his hat and stick, opened softly the door as though he were afraid that some one would try to stop him, and was soon on the grass in front of the Cathedral, staring about him as though he had awakened from a bewildering dream.

He went across to the little side-door, found his key, and entered the Cathedral, leaving the gargoyle to grin after him, growing more alive, and more malicious too, with every fading moment of the light.

Within the Cathedral there was a strange shadowy glow as though behind the thick cold pillars lights were burning. He found his way, stumbling over the cane-bottomed chairs that were piled in measured heaps in the side aisle, into the nave. Even he, used to it as he had been for so many years, was thrilled to-night. There was a movement of preparation abroad; through all the stillness there was the stir of life. It seemed to him that the armoured knights and the high-bosomed ladies, and the little cupids with their pursed lips and puffing cheeks, and the angels with their too solid wings were watching him and breathing round him as he passed. Late though it was, a dim light from the great East window fell in broad slabs of purple and green shadow across the grey; everything was indistinct; only the white marble of the Reredos was like a figured sheet hanging from wall to wall, and the gilded trumpets of the angels on the choir-screen stood out dimly like spider pattern. He felt a longing that the place should return his love and tenderness. The passion of his life was here; he knew to-night, as he had never before, the life of its own that this place had, and as he stayed there, motionless in the centre of the nave, some doubt stole into his heart as to whether, after all, he and it were one and indivisible, as for so long he had believed. Take this away, and what was left to him? His son had gone, his wife and daughter were strange to him; if this, too, went....

The sudden chill sense of loneliness was awful to him. All those naked and sightless eyes staring from those embossed tombs were menacing, scornful, deriding.

He had never known such a mood, and he wondered suddenly whether these last months had affected his brain.

He had never doubted during the last ten years his power over this and its gratitude to him for what he had done: now, in this chill and green-hued air, it seemed not to care for him at all.

He moved up into the choir and sat down in his familiar stall; all that he could see--his eyes seemed to be drawn by some will stronger than his own --was the Black Bishop's Tomb. The blue stone was black behind the gilded grating, the figure was like a moulded shell holding some hidden form. The light died; the purple and green faded from the nave--the East window was dark--only the white altar and the whiter shadows above it hovered, thinner light against deeper grey. As the light was withdrawn the Cathedral seemed to grow in height until Brandon felt himself minute, and the pillars sprang from the floor beneath him into unseen canopied distance. He was cold; he longed suddenly, with a strange terror quite new to him, for human company, and stumbled up and hurried down the choir, almost falling over the stone steps, almost running through the long, dark, deserted nave. He fancied that other steps echoed his own, that voices whispered, and that figures thronged beneath the pillars to watch him go. It was as though he were expelled.

Out in the evening air he was in his own world again. He was almost tempted to return into the Cathedral to rid himself of the strange fancies that he had had, so that they might not linger with him. He found himself now on the farther side of the Cathedral, and after walking a little way he was on the little narrow path that curved down through the green banks to the river. Behind him was the Cathedral, to his right Bodger's Street and Canon's Yard, in front of him the bending hill, the river, and then the farther slips where the lights of the gipsy encampment sparkled and shone. Here the air was lovely, cool and soft, and the stars were crowding into the summer sky in their myriads. But his depression did not leave him, nor his loneliness. He longed for Falk with a great longing. He could not hold out against the boy for very much longer; but even then, were the quarrel made up, things would not now he the same. Falk did not need him any more. He had new life, new friends, new work.

"It's my nerves," thought Brandon. "I will go and see Puddifoot." It seemed to him that some one, and perhaps more than one, had followed him from the Cathedral. He turned sharply round as though he would catch somebody creeping upon him. He turned round and saw Samuel Hogg standing there.

"Evening, Archdeacon," said Hogg.

Brandon said, his voice shaking with anger: "What are you following me for?"

"Following you, Archdeacon?"

"Yes, following me. I have noticed it often lately. If you have anything to say to me write to me."

"Following you? Lord, no! What makes you think of such a thing, Archdeacon? Can't a feller enjoy the evenin' air on such a lovely night as this without being accused of following a gentleman?"

"You know that you are trying to annoy me." Brandon, had pulled himself up, but his hatred of that grinning face with its purple veins, its piercing eyes, was working strongly upon his nerves, so that his hands seemed to move towards it without his own impulsion. "You have been trying to annoy me for weeks now. I'll stand you no longer. If I have any more of this nuisance I'll put it into the hands of the police."

Hogg spat out complacently over the grass. "Now, that is an absurd thing," he said, smiling. "Because a man's tired and wants some air after his day's work he's accused of being a nuisance. It's a bit thick, that's what it is. Now, tell, Archdeacon, do you happen to have bought this 'ere town, because if so I should be glad to know it--and so would a number of others too."

"Very well, then," said Brandon, moving away. "If you won't go, I will."

"There's no need for temper that I can see," said Hogg. "No call for it at all, especially that we're a sort of relation now. Almost brothers, seeing as how your son has married my daughter."

Lower and lower! Lower and lower!

He was moving in a world now where figures, horrible, obscene and foul, could claim him, could touch him, had their right to follow him.

"You will get nothing from me," Brandon answered. "You are wasting your time."

"Wasting my time?" Hogg laughed. "Not me! I'm enjoying myself. I don't want anything from you except just to see you sometimes and have a little chat. That's quite enough for me! I've taken quite a liking to you, Archdeacon, which is as it should be between relations, and, often enough, it isn't so. I like to see a proud gentleman like yourself mixing with such as me. It's good for both of us, as you might say."

Brandon's anger--always dangerously uncontrolled--rose until it seemed to have the whole of his body in his grasp, swaying it, ebbing and flowing with swift powerful current through his heart into his brain. Now he could only see the flushed, taunting face, the little eyes....

But Hogg's hour was not yet. He suddenly touched his cap, smiling.

"Well, good evening, Archdeacon. We'll be meeting again,"--and he was gone.

As swiftly as the anger had flowed now it ebbed, leaving him trembling, shaking, that strange sharp pain cutting his brain, his heart seeming to leap into his head, to beat there like a drum, and to fall back with heavy thud into his chest again. He stood waiting for calm. He was humiliated, desperately, shamefully. He could not go on here; he must leave the place. Leave it? Be driven away by that scoundrel? Never! He would face them all and show them that he was above and beyond their power.

But the peace of the evening and the glory of the stars gradually stole into his heart. He had been wrong, terribly wrong. His pride, his conceit, had been destroying him. With a sudden flash of revelation he saw it. He had trusted in his own power, put himself on a level with the God whom he served. A rush of deep and sincere humility overwhelmed him. He bowed his head and prayed.

Some while later he turned up the path towards home. The whole sky now burnt with stars; fires were a dull glow across the soft gulf of grey, the gipsy fires. Once and again a distant voice could be heard singing. As he reached the corner of the Cathedral, and was about to turn up towards the Precincts, a strange sound reached his ears. He stood where he was and listened. At first he could not define what he heard--then suddenly he realised. Quite close to him a man was sobbing.

There is something about the sounds of a man's grief that is almost indecent. This sobbing was pitiful in its abandonment and in its effort to control and stifle.

Brandon, looking more closely, saw the dark shadow of a man's body pressed against the inside buttress of the corner of the Cathedral wall. The shadow crouched, the body all drawn together as though folding in upon itself to hide its own agony.

Brandon endeavoured to move softly up the path, but his step crunched on some twigs, and at the sharp noise the sobbing suddenly ceased. The figure turned.

It was Morris. The two men looked at one another for an instant, then Morris, still like a shadow, vanished swiftly into the dusk.