poverty, and Gabriel begins dying where he began living. The kindness
between the brothers is as simple in the broken adventurer whose wide
world has failed him as in the aging peasant, pent from his birth in
the Cathedral close, with no knowledge of anything beyond it. All
their kindred who serve in their several sort the stepmother church,
down to the gardener's son whose office is to keep dogs out of the
Cathedral and has the title of _perrero_, are good to the returning
exile. They do not well understand what and where he has been; the
tradition of his gifted youth when he was dedicated to the church and
forsook her service at the altar for her service in the field, remains
unquestioned, and he is safe in the refuge of his family who can offer
mainly their insignificance for his protection. The logic of the fact
is perfect, and Gabriel's emergence from the quiet of his retreat
inevitably follows from the nature of the agitator as the logic of
his own past and has the approval at least of the _perrero_ and the
allegiance of the rest. What is very important in the affair is that
most of the inhabitants of this Cathedral-world, rich and poor, good,
bad, and indifferent, mean and generous, are few of them wicked
people, as wickedness is commonly understood; they all have their
habitual or their occasional moments of good will.

The refugee is tired of his past but he does not deny his faith in
humanity; his doctrine only postpones to a time secularly remote the
redemption of humanity from its secular suffering. He begins at once
to do good; he rescues his kind elder brother from the repudiation of
the daughter whom he has cast off because her seduction has condemned
her to a life of shame; he wins back the poor prostitute to her home,
and forces her father to tolerate her in it.

Most of the Cathedral folk are of course miserably poor, but willing