Lemuel Doret walked slowly home from the prayer meeting with his being
vibrating to the triumphant beat of the last hymn. It was a good hymn,
filled with promised joy for every one who conquered sin. The long
twilight of early summer showed the surrounding fields still bright
green, but the more distant hills were vague, the sky was remote and
faintly blue, and shadows thickened under the heavy maples that covered
the single street of Nantbrook. The small frame dwellings of the
village were higher than the precarious sidewalk; flights of steps
mounted to the narrow porches; and though Lemuel Doret realized that
his neighbors were sitting outside he did not look up, and no voices
called down arresting his deliberate progress.

An instant bitterness, tightening his thin metallic lips and narrowing
a cold fixed gaze, destroyed the harmony of the assured salvation.
Lemuel Doret silently cursed the pinched stupidity of the country
clods. The slow helpless fools! If instead of muttering in groups one
of the men would face him with the local hypocrisy he'd sink a heel in
his jaw. The bitterness expanded into a hatred like the gleam on a
knife blade; his hands, spare and hard, grew rigid with the desire to
choke a thick throat.

Then the rage sank before a swift self-horror, an overwhelming
conviction of his relapse into unutterable sin. He stopped and in a
spiritual agony, forgetful of his surroundings, half lifted quivering
arms to the dim sky: "O Christ, lean down from the throne and hold me
steady."

He stood for a moment while a monotonous chatter on a porch above
dropped to a curious stillness. It seemed to him that his whisper was