utterly vile can contemplate real unassuming goodness and unselfishness without a certain warming of the heart.

Hampson was only half educated—he had the very greatest difficulty in making a living, yet he was always bright and happy, ever illuminated by some inward joy.

Even as he thought of Hampson—almost his only friend—Joseph saw the man himself coming out of the narrow doorway. Hampson saw the scholar at once in his quick, bird-like way, and waved his hand with a significant and triumphant gesture.

There was to be dinner, then!

It was not so. The two poor friends were not to share a humble meal together on that night, at any rate.

High above Joseph's head, two planks were being slowly hauled upwards to the topmost part of the scaffolding. They were secured by the usual halter knot round the centre. The noose, however, had slipped, as the rope was a new one, and the two heavy pieces of timber hung downwards with the securing tie perilously near the upper end.

There was a sudden shout of alarm which sent a hundred startled faces peering upwards and then the planks fell right upon the man who stood beneath, crushing him to the ground, face downwards, like a broken blade of grass.

With the magic celerity which is part of the psychology of crowds, a ring of excited people sprang round the crushed, motionless figure, as if at the bidding of a magician's wand.

Willing hands began to lift the great beams from it. Hampson had been one of the first to see and realize the accident.

He was by the side of his friend in three or four seconds after the planks had struck him down. And he saw something that, even in his horror and excitement, sent a strange inexplicable throb through his blood and made all his pulses drum with a sense of quickening, of nearness to the Unseen, such as he had never experienced in all his life before.

It is given to those who are very near to God to see visions, sometimes to draw very close to the Great Veil.

The two planks of timber had fallen over Joseph's back in the exact form of the Cross. To the little journalist, if to no one else in the rapidly-gathering crowd, the wood and the bowed figure below it brought back the memory of a great picture he had seen, a picture of the Via Dolorosa, when Jesus fainted and fell under the weight He bore.

CHAPTER II

"SOMETHING MARVELLOUS IS GOING TO HAPPEN"

In the drawing-room of a house in Berkeley Square, Lady Kirwan—the wife of Sir Augustus Kirwan, the great banker—was arguing with her niece, Mary Lys.

The elder lady was tall and stately, and although not aggressive in any way, her manner was distinctly that of one accustomed to rule. Her steady grey eyes and curved, rather beak-like nose gave her an aspect of sternness which was genially relieved by a large, good-humored mouth. At fifty, Lady Kirwan's hair was still dark and glossy, and time had dealt very gently with her.

Of the old Welsh family of Lys, now bereft of all its great heritage of the past, but with a serene and lofty pride in its great name still, she had married Sir Augustus, then Mr. Kirwan, in early girlhood. As the years went on, and her husband's vast wealth grew vaster still, and he rose to be one of the financial princes of the world, Lady Kirwan became a very prominent figure in society, and at fifty she had made herself one of the hundred people who really rule it.

One daughter, Marjorie, was born to Sir Augustus and his wife, a beauty, and one of the most popular girls in society.

"You may say what you like, but I have no patience at all with either you or your crack-brained brother, Mary!" Lady Kirwan exclaimed, with an irritable rapping of her fingers upon a little lapis lazuli table at her side.

Mary Lys was a tall girl, dressed in the blue uniform of a hospital nurse. The cloak was thrown back over her shoulders, and its scarlet lining threw up the perfect oval contour of her face and the glorious masses of black hair that crowned it. If Marjorie Kirwan was generally said to be one of the prettiest girls in London—and the couple of millions she would inherit by no means detracted from her good looks—certainly Mary Lys might have been called one of the most beautiful.

The perfect lips, graver than the lips of most girls, almost maternal in their gentleness, formed, as it were, the just complement to the great grey eyes, with their long dark lashes and delicately-curved black brows. The chin was broad and firm, but very womanly, and over all that lovely face brooded a holy peace, a high serenity, and a watchful tenderness that one sees in the pictures of the old masters when they drew the pious maids and matrons who followed the footsteps of Our Lord on earth.

Her beauty was not the sort of beauty which would attract every one. It was, indeed, physical beauty in perfection, but irradiated also by loveliness of soul. The common-minded man who prefers the conscious and vulgar prettiness of some theatre girl, posed for the lens of the camera or the admiring glances of the crowd, would have said:—

"Oh, yes, she's beautiful, of course! One can't help admitting that. But she's not my style a bit. Give me something with a little more life in it."

But there were not wanting many men and women who said that they had thought that the mother of the Saviour must have looked like Mary Lys.

"No! I've really no patience with either of you!" Lady Kirwan repeated.

"But, Aunt Ethel, surely we ought to live our own lives. I am quite happy with my nursing in the East End. One can't do more good than by trying to nurse and cure the sick, can one? And Lluellyn is happy also in his Welsh mountains. He lives a very saintly life, auntie—a life of prayer and preaching and good works, even if it is unconventional and seems strange to you. I would not have it otherwise. Lluellyn is not suited for the modern world."

"Fiddlesticks, Mary!" Lady Kirwan answered. "'Modern world,' indeed! You speak as if you said 'Modern pestilence'! Who made the world, I should like to know? And what right have you and your brother to despise it? I'm sick of all this nonsense. How a girl with your looks and of your blood, for there is hardly a peer in England with such a pedigree as that of our family, can go on grubbing away nursing horrible people with horrible diseases in that dreadful East End I can't possibly imagine. You've no money, of course, for your two hundred a year is a mere nothing. But what does that matter? Haven't your uncle and I more than we know what to do with? Marjorie has already an enormous fortune settled upon her. She is almost certain to marry the Duke of Dover next season. Well, what do we offer you—you and Lluellyn? You are to be as our second daughter. We will give you everything that a girl can have in this world. You shall share in our wealth as if you were my own daughter. With your looks and the money which is available for you, you may marry any one. We stand well at Court. His Majesty is pleased when one of the great old families of the realm restores its fallen fortunes. Every chance and opportunity is yours. As for your brother, as I have so often written and told him, he will be a son to us. We have not been given a son; he shall become one. There is enough and to spare for all. Give up this nonsense of yours. Make Lluellyn come to his senses and leave his absurd hermit life, and this mad preaching about in the mountain villages. Come to us at once, both of you. What more could any one offer you, child? Am I not pleading with you out of my love for you and my nephew, out of a sincere desire to see you both take your proper place in the world?"

Lady Kirwan stopped, a little out of breath after her long speech, every word of which had been uttered with the sincerest conviction and prompted by real affection.

There was probably no more worldly woman in London than the kindly wife of the great financier. The world was all in all to her, and