before she could go on stitching.

I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door. What
a spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of coal, with
kindling on top. Some of the coal dust had coated his face, and the
sweat from his exertions was running in streaks. He dropped his burden
in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandana
handkerchief. I could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses. The
Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman's cheap cotton shirt
(one button was missing from the throat), and in overalls! That was the
most incongruous of all--the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged
down at the heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips
such as laborers wear.

Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old woman were
already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the Bishop had
built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil.
I was to learn, as time went by, that there were many cases similar
to hers, and many worse, hidden away in the monstrous depths of the
tenements in my neighborhood.

We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first
surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,
stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a
comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had met since
his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening weeks he must
have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us much, though he told
us more of the joy he had experienced in doing the Master's bidding.

"For truly now," he said, "I am feeding his lambs. And I have learned