it. 'I don't know many who know it better than myself,' said he, 'but they're all taught it, and Mr Macarthy knows it better than I do.'

Herr Behre admitted that Mr Macarthy knew most things better than other people. 'But this is the first time,' said he, 'that I have heard of him referring to the Catechism. What are the two quotations?'

Adam answered promptly: 'The first is Matthew xii. 36, and the second is also Matthew xix. 26.'

'That would say to me absolutely nothing,' said Herr Behre, then before Adam could reply he put up his hand, 'Wait a moment.' For a moment he sat buried in thought: then, with both hands pressed to his forehead, his eyes closed and thumbs upon his ears he chanted: 'Ich sage euch aber, das die Menschen müssen Rechenschaft geben am Jüngsten Gericht von einem jéglichen unnützen Wort, das sie geredet haben.' He looked up: 'Is that it, eh? He's cautioning you against idle words?'

'That's it,' said Adam. And every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.'

'Good,' said Herr Behre, 'and now what's the number of the other one?'

'Matthew xix., 26,' Adam told him, his interest roused by the musician's exhibition of the latent powers of memory.

Herr Behre muttered under his breath: 'Matthai Neunzehn, Sechsundzwanzig,' then he said aloud: 'Es ist leichter, das ein Kameel durch ein Nadelohr gehé he broke off, .'Nein, nein, das ist es nicht,' and tried again. 'Jesus aber sahe sie an, und sprach zu ihnen: "Bei den Menschen ist es unmöglich, aber bei Gott sind alle Dinge möglich."'

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Adam, anxious to air his little knowledge of German, cried out: 'That's it, you got it again. "With God all things are possible.'

'Ha!' said Herr Behre between pride and weariness drawing a deep breath, 'So I knew Mr Macarthy's two quotations after all, at any rate as I read them once in grand old Martin Luther's Bible.'

'Grand old Martin Luther?' Adam repeated aghast, 'Do you really mean "grand old he stopped dead, he was too astonished to repeat the name again. 'That's what Robert Browning calls him,' Herr Behre informed him, though I don't know that I quite agree with him. He was a sychophant of princes and a time-server and as bigoted himself as the worst of the bigots he fought against, but he did do something to make German a real language and for that I feel grateful to him.'

'Oh,' said Adam, 'I thought he was just a bad priest.' Herr Behre looked at him and grunted: 'The worse the better.' Then he added in a milder tone: 'No, you must not take me to mean that; there is nothing better perhaps of its kind than a good priest, such as your friend Father Innocent. But,' he added gravely, 'to be a priest at all is a great temptation to be bad.'

'How is it a temptation to be bad?' Adam asked, for no one had put this view of Sacerdotalism before him. He knew that priests could be bad, but he thought they would have been still worse if they had not been priests.

Herr Behre told him : 'Because the priest represents himself as an agent appointed directly by God to exercise His will on those who are not priests.'

'Oh,' said Adam, 'and you think that their being appointed by God is all imaginary?'

'I think that God himself is imaginary,' said Herr Behre.

It seemed to Adam that the room was swimming round him. 'God . . . imaginary!' he ejaculated. Herr Behre smiled at him reassuringly. 'Don't be alarmed, I do not blaspheme. There is a God, I well believe, and not a God made of protoplasm.'

'What's protoplasm?' Adam broke in, anxious even at this moment of dread to add a new word of such interesting purport to his vocabulary.

But Herr Behre declined to be drawn into a definition of the word. 'It is too late for that,' he alleged. 'Both of us little boys must go to bed, but I would have you understand that when I say God is imaginary, I only mean that our conception of God is arrived at through our imagination, I mean the imaginations of our great poets, such as that Jewish gentleman who was content to write under the pseudonym of "Moses.'

The Dustman, called Morpheus, added to the mystification with which even at the best of times this speech would have overwhelmed Adam. He murmured rather drowsily: 'I suppose the baronet was not such a great poet as all that?'

Said Herr Behre: 'He was poet enough to have his own conception of God, but not poet enough, it would seem, to have a great conception of Him? and yet, who knows?'-he fell silent-then, looking in the fire, repeated: 'Who knows, who knows?' There was again silence, and, still looking in the fire, Adam thought, as if he saw Sir David burning in the heart of hell, 'His last thought of God was a bitter one, but not so bitter as his thought of himself . . . his case no man must judge.' He turned to the book of verses again, and read in a tone in which Adam now found nothing to laugh :

Only of him who may follow me am I afraid.

If thou art he, I beg thee abject to forgive
Him that lies dead, for the folly that called thee
to live.'

There was a long silence, and Adam's head was drooping on his breast, and he was wondering whether he had not heard himself snore, when he felt the

musician take him on his knee. "Say now to me,' said he, 'if you were the poet's son or grandson, would you forgive him for bringing you into the world?'

Adam rubbed his eyes and looked up, startled, into his questioner's face. 'There's nothing to forgive,' said he; 'I'm jolly glad to be alive.' He yawned. 'But I don't understand; what's it all about?' Then he fell asleep in Herr Behre's arms, lulled by the distant bells ringing their first joyous peal for the coming of Christmas Day. Then the heavier bells of St George's, so near at hand, roused him enough for him to undress himself, with the aid of Herr Behre, who kissed his forehead and his hands, and, blowing out the candle, wished him a Happy Christmas and Good-night. He had no bad dreams.

Chapter Twenty

OF DEATH AND BURIAL

THAT Christmas morning of his fourteenth year Adam awoke at the agreeable hour, for that time of the season, of a quarter to eight o'clock, so that, without jumping out of bed at once, he could, nevertheless, be up and doing before the sun. Owing, however, to his feeling particularly well-satisfied with himself, he allowed the sun to beat him by twenty minutes, and he was still dressing at a quarter to nine. Still, he enjoyed his breakfast, for he felt his virtue to be so great as to cover his unpunctuality. He did not remember everything that had passed the day before, but he recollected that he had forgiven Father Tudor (or at any rate he said to himself that he had), and he had also offered to forgive Sir David Byron-Quinn, in the event, admittedly improbable, of there being anything to forgive. There was something peculiarly gratifying in the thought that he might be privileged to forgive a baronet for being his grandfather.. Then he had the sense to laugh at himself as he recalled the impossibility of that baronet being his grandfather. Baronets do not have grandchildren born in the slums. . . . The recollection that he had been born in the slums sobered, and even saddened him, until, looking round the room, he was cheered again, particularly when he saw the pile of his presents, to reflect upon the difference between the hideous past and the cosy present. He determined to dismiss from his mind all hankerings after gentility of pedigree, and to show his gratitude to those who were good to