All this was terribly real to him, and he imagined the dread scene more strongly every moment. Those Two went on debating his case-becoming now so solidly presented to his imagination that he could see Them, the purple color of Their robes, the halo of light as in a painted window, Their forms, Their faces. God the Father was not unlike old Mr. Bates, except that He had a long beard and that there mingled with the candid dignity of His expression a consciousness of sovereign power. The Holy Ghost was clean-shaven, very thin, with sharp clearly-cut features as of somebody who does not enjoy robust health, and with a slight but painful suggestion of a Roman Catholic priest who habitually goes deep into private secrets and is never really satisfied until he has extracted the fullest possible confessions. He was the One that Dale had never so much cared about-the difficult member of the firm, the sleeping partner who never really slept, who professed to keep himself in the background, but who quietly asserted himself in important moments and proved infinitely the hardest of the Three.

And so it had been in this case. Since time is nothing, and then and now are all one, Dale imagined that while his Judges talked of him in Heaven his whole earthly career had flashed onward to its end; so that he and all that concerned him was disposed of at one continuous sitting. Thus, without a pause, the Holy Ghost was already saying, "You see I was right in my first view of the affair. Dale is disgracing himself again. Now You and I must not allow any further communication between Our dear Son and such an impostor."

Then Christ pleaded for him, prayed for mercy. Christ, although invisible, was certainly there, imploring mercy for the man he had trusted and loved; and, in spite of the fact that He remained unseen, His mere presence glorified and magnified the heavenly scene. The light grew softer and yet more supremely radiant; hosts of angels soared and hovered in vast spaces between the rolling clouds; a vibrating echo of the divine pity swept like music far and near.

But the Holy Ghost brought forward a large strongly-bound volume, opened it, and said very quietly, "Let Me show You what We have against him in the book." And at sight of the book Dale shivered and grew cold to the core of his spine. He knew perfectly well what was entered in the book, and he thought, “It stands to reason They could never get over that. I might have known all along that would do for me, an' there was no getting round it.”

"This is his record," the voice of the implacable Judge continued; "not what I have attributed to him as secret thought, but words taken down as spoken by his own mouth. Having committed his crime, he had the calm audacity—to lay the blame on US. . . . . Yes, here is the entry. This is the statement verbatim: It is the finger of God."

And Christ seemed to plead in an agony of grief, still strove to lighten the punishment of the pitiful worm that he had deigned to call His brother man. "Oh, he didn't mean it.”

"He said it," replied the Holy Ghost, dryly. "But he didn't think what he was saying-he has been sorry for it ever since."

"Yet, frankly," said the Holy Ghost, “I can not see

that he has made a single effort to put things straight, by removing the blame to the proper quarter-that is, to himself."

Nevertheless, Christ still pleaded, could not be silenced, must go on struggling to save this one manbecause He was the Savior of all men, because He was Christ. He was there, certainly, infallibly, although quite invisible-He was there, kneeling at the feet of the other Two, praying, weeping:-He was there, filling Heaven with inconsolable woe because, although His myriad suns shone bright as when He lighted them and His universe swung steady and true in His measureless void, one microscopic speck of dirt only just big enough to hold immortal life was in danger of eternal death.

All these imaginations were absolutely real to Dale, an approximate conception of the truth which he could not doubt; and he thought: "Need I wonder if I have not had the slightest glimpse of His face? It is my doom. Christ is cut off from me. So far as human time counts, the communication was broken that afternoon when I was seeming to see him as he rode into Jerusalem and my hankerings after Norah seemed to snap the thread.

"I was judged at that moment. It was my doomnever more, here or there, to look upon His face."

IT

XXXV

'T was the evening of another day; and Dale stood motionless in the ride, close to Kibworth Rocks. The twilight was fading rapidly; clouds that had crept up from the east filled the sky, and presaged a dark and probably a stormy night. Every now and then a gust of angry wind shook the tops of the fir trees; then the air was still and heavy again, and then the wind came back a little fiercer than before. Dale felt sure that there would be rain presently, and he thought: "If his ghost is really lying in there, it'll get as wet as that first night when the showers washed away all the blood."

He stared and listened, but to-night he could not fancy that he heard the dead man calling to him. He could not invent any appropriate conversation. It seemed to him that the ugly phantom was refusing to talk, that it had become sulky, or that it was pretending not to be there at all in order to effect a most insidious purpose. Yes, that must be the explanation. It wanted to entice and lure him off the ride-to make him venture right in there among the rocks, so that he might be shown the thing that had haunted him in dreams.

"Very well," said Dale, "so be it. That's the idea. All right. I agree."

30.

He did not, however, move for another minute or He was thinking hard, and listening eagerly.

But he could hear no sound, could imagine no sound, other than that made by the wind.

Then he moved, and, examining the ground, made his way slowly from the ride to the rocks, thinking the while, "It's impossible to follow my exact footsteps, because things have changed-but this was about the line I took with him."

Forcing himself through a tangle of holly and hawthorn, he came out into the open space and his feet struck against stone. In front of him the rocks rose darkly against the waning light, and he began to clamбer about among them, over smooth round surfaces, along narrow gullies, and by cruel jagged ridges, seeking to find the exact spot where he had left the dead body. "It was about here," he said, after a time. It was close by here. Prob'bly down there, where the foxgloves and the blackberries have taken root. Anyhow, that's near enough. I've come as near as I can;" and he sat down upon the ledge just above this hollow, and looked about him, attentively, in all directions.

66

The wind had ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over the strewn boulders. Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked masses of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about him the shadows filled every hollow, and the rocks were like shoals or reefs above the surface of a stagnant sea.

The place was a wilderness, a solitude, the dead and barren landscape of dreams-quite empty, unoccupied, a place that even ghosts would shun. He sat think