plied the interloper, quietly and emphatically, but not offensively.
In the meanwhile the subtle cordiality of John's manner did not abate but seemed rather to grow, for, still clinging to the Elder's hand, Hampstead walked with him back down the aisle to the open space before the pulpit. Burbeck felt himself strangely subdued. He was minded to rebel, to flame up; but somehow he couldn't. Yet Sister Nelson's eye was upon him, and it would imperil his own leadership to appear beaten by this mild-mannered young man who assumed so much so coolly and executed his assumptions so masterfully. The alternative strategy which suggested itself to the mind of the Elder was to take the lead in showing that he recognized the intrusion of Hampstead as somehow an intervention from which good might come. To make this strategy effective, however, action must be immediate; but the shrewd Elder was easily equal to that. Sniffing the air critically for a moment, he announced, loudly enough to be heard by all, even by Sister Nelson, busy with her boys:
"You need some windows open, Brother Hampstead! You go on with your superintending; I'll attend to that myself."
Immediately the Elder laid his tall hat upon the pulpit steps and busied himself with opening the windows at the top.
John watched him with carefully concealed amazement, until an unmistakable awe settled in upon him; for here was obviously the exhibition of a mystery,—the demonstration of a power within him not his own. Here was something he had not done; yet which had been done through him, through the presence of the Presence.
As the lesson hour proceeded, a trickling stream of adults began to filter in. Their attitude, any more than Burbeck's had been, was not that of people who enter a
