fox-hunting squires over the creatures they honour with their
attention.

'What is it, my dear?' Mrs. Marston looked over her spectacles, and her
eyes were like half moons peering over full moons.

'That there picture! They'm hurting Him so cruel. And Him fast and
all.'

'Oh!' said Mrs. Marston wonderingly, 'that's nothing to get vexed
about. Why, don't you know that's Jesus Christ dying for us?'

'Not for me!' flashed Hazel.

'My dear!'

'No, what for should He? There shall none die along of me, much less be
tormented.'

'Needs be that one man die for the people,' quoted Mrs. Marston easily.
'Only through blood can sin be washed white.'

'Blood makes things raddled, not white; and if so be any's got to die;
I'll die for myself.'

The old gabled houses, dark and solemn with heavy carved oak, the smart
plate-glass windows of the modern shops, the square dogmatic church
towers and the pointed insinuating spires--all seemed to listen in
surprise to this being who was not content to let another suffer for
her. For civilization as it now stands is based solely on this one