Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/172

work, poor lodgings, poor food and dismal company. Something stopped him just as he was about to set down the other. "Oh," he cried, "is the love of Jesus nothing that I think like that?" And he began to pray rapidly, "Lord, I believe, forgive my unbelief."

For a little he sat in his chair looking straight before him. It would be impossible to put down in words the peculiar hardness of his struggle. For he had to fight with his memory and his inclinations, both of which are to a certain extent independent of the will; and he did this not by sheer strength of resolution, but by fixing his thought upon an abstraction and attempting to clothe it in warm, lovable attributes. He thought upon the countless mercies of God towards him, as his creed showed them; and so strong was the man that in a little he had gotten the victory.

By-and-by he got up and put on his overcoat, thin and patched, and called so only by courtesy. He suddenly remembered his work, how he was engaged that night to lead a crusade through some of the worst streets by the river. Such a crusade was the romantic description by certain imaginative Salvationists of a procession of some dozen men and women with tambourines and concertinas, singing hymns, and sowing the good seed broadcast in the shape of vociferous invitations to mercy and pardon. He hailed it as a sort of anodyne to his pain. There was small time for morbid recollection and introspection if one were engaged in leading a crew of excited followers in places where they were by no means sure of a favourable reception.

There was a noise without on the stairs, then a rap at the door, and Brother Leather entered, whom Whitechapel and the Mile-End Road knew for the most vigilant of soldiers and violent of exhorters.

"Are you strong in the Lord, Captain?" he asked. "For to-nightwe're