Mary Stopperton did not know the name of the preacher. It was quite common for chance substitutes to officiate there, especially in the evening. Joan had insisted on her acceptance of a shilling, and had made a note of her address, feeling instinctively that the little old woman would “come in useful” from a journalistic point of view. “Are you, too, a Christian?” he asked of Joan.!

“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.” “We must help her,” she answered somewhat lamely. “She’s anxious to learn, I know.”

“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast. “You have got to consider the cost of refusal,” she said. “His offer wasn’t help or neutrality: it was help or opposition by every means in his power. He left me in no kind of doubt as to that. He’s not used to being challenged and he won’t be squeamish. You will have the whole of his Press against you, and every other journalistic and political influence that he possesses. He’s getting a hold upon the working classes. The Sunday Post has an enormous sale in the manufacturing towns; and he’s talking of starting another. Are you strong enough to fight him?” The wounded men had heard it also. Dubos had moved forward. Madame Lelanne had risen. It came again, the thin, faint shrill of a distant bugle. Footsteps were descending the stairs. French soldiers, laughing, shouting, were crowding round them.