As I say, he became well, quite well, and the newspapers and the church
people hailed his return with joy. I went once to his church. The sermon
was of the same order as the ones he had preached long before his eyes
had seen visions. I was disappointed, shocked. Had society then beaten
him into submission? Was he a coward? Had he been bulldozed into
recanting? Or had the strain been too great for him, and had he meekly
surrendered to the juggernaut of the established?

I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was woefully changed. He was
thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never seen before.
He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked nervously at his
sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were restless, fluttering here, there,
and everywhere, and refusing to meet mine. His mind seemed preoccupied,
and there were strange pauses in his conversation, abrupt changes of
topic, and an inconsecutiveness that was bewildering. Could this, then,
be the firm-poised, Christ-like man I had known, with pure, limpid eyes
and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul? He had been man-handled;
he had been cowed into subjection. His spirit was too gentle. It had not
been mighty enough to face the organized wolf-pack of society.

I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambiguously, and was so
apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to catechise
him. He spoke in a far-away manner of his illness, and we talked
disjointedly about the church, the alterations in the organ, and about
petty charities; and he saw me depart with such evident relief that I
should have laughed had not my heart been so full of tears.

The poor little hero! If I had only known! He was battling like a giant,
and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst of millions of