“In what way?” questioned Joan. “Couldn’t you have saved a bit, Daddy?” she asked, “of all that wealth of youth—just enough to live on?”!

“Better not go on, nurse,” said one of them. “It’s some poor devil of a Conchy, I expect. Must have a damned sight more pluck than I should.” She took from among the litter a faded photograph and handed it to Joan. “Odd,” she said. “I’ve just turned it out.”

“His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?” “Aye,” he answered, “I must be careful I don’t die on Christmas Day. It would make a fine text, that, for their sermons.” “Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”