he to do this, but ever he came forth penniless and nearly without hope. Yet he would ever say again and again, "Shall I that profess to be a Christian fail to pay what I owe? Am I not steward unto Shem, hence also unto Simon of Cyrene? Then will I pay."

He went, therefore, unto the epitropos metallon, or superintendent of the mines (which were over in Laurion), and mentioned unto him: "Thou needest, I hear, yet further men in the Mines of the Free-tochoose."

Said the epitropos, "I need them."

Said Trivialis, "I will work for thee, but at such a price.' Said the epitropos, "Not for so much, but for so much." Trivialis said, "I do bargain therewith. And when I have earned me such and such a sum, then will I come forth out of the mines again. For behold, I am a free man, and not under any compulsion that I should do this thing. But willingly I do it, for I choose."

And he chose, and went down into the mines, and labored diligently.

Nor was he dull or cheerless, but sang the song of the frogs out of Aristophanes, again hymned the psalms of David. And the hearts of his fellow workers, which often had been sore troubled, were uplifted into much peace.

And when Trivialis had laid by all the drachmæ needful to the paying of him he owed, then went he not forth immediately from out the mines again. For behold, he had formed a habit, to wit, that of loving money for its own sake. Therefore, after he had saved a sufficiency to pay his debt, yea and much more also, still he did choose to remain in the mines, and to hoard up more and more.

Therefore not wholly unscathed went he forth at last from the mines of Them That Are Free to Choose. And it happened in this way. On the day when he would indeed have gone forth, behold, a great cask of oil (which was there for the lamps) and which sat beside the place where all the man's accompts and all his moneys were, took fire. And he fought the flames valiantly, and saved his accompts and moneys. But his face was seared from his forehead to his chin. And he breathed the heated air, that even his voice forever after was altered.

Yet, when he wished, he went forth out of the mine.

Nor was either of the man's two eyes an-injured. But, from the day when his wounds were healed, behold, he found that he had no countenance at all, nor was in any wise (at least to outward seeming) made in the image of the Lord. But whenever he tapped with a

finger-tip upon his face, there issued a sound as it were of hollow wood.

And he went on a day to Corinth, there to exchange the silver of the mines for Roman gold. This, when he received it, he buckled round his body, and set forth unto Athens, and, on the way, being beset by robbers, he overcometh them, rejoicing and crying: “Behold! I am victor, and I am fain to laugh."

But he met in the road a harlot. And she blandisheth him, and getteth him well a-drunken at an inn hard by, and so robbeth him, and hath him cast out into the fields.

When he awakened, it still was night, yet not that night whereon he had met the harlot. In his head was a living flame of fire. And his hands and feet and all his limbs were stiff with cold.

He ariseth with difficulty and looketh all round, wondering who he now may be, even as the original Adam might have done when first he had tasted wine.

Then a knowledge and understanding of the earlier night began to fume and float in his flimmering mind. He passed an icy palm across his face and forehead. Then he felt the hard, wood-like scars, and laughed. "I am fain to laugh," said he, "but I laugh without pleasure.'

After that he gave a sudden cry, a shrill ascending shriek of despair. For he had found that he had been robbed.

And the man beat upon his breast and declared, "My name, henceforth, shall be 'Conatus,' for I am but An Attempt-a mere effort, aye and a vain one truly. And I will never tell my former name to any man. Nor shall they ever find me out."

Then the man without a face stumbled and felt his way to a little spring that flowed hard by. There sought he to wash his distorted countenance, but could not, for sheer weakness.

And behold! he perceived coming up, on the far side of the water, one whom he knew with great sadness, even a friend of Christopherus, Thrasus Neus, a very shining person.

And he cried in his soul, "My God, my God, can I face this manhim that hath helped me so many times ere now?"

But Thrasus Neus came around the pool, and, having ministered sweetly unto him, so that Conatus's courage, by little and little, arose, he asked the wretch: "Who art thou, sorrowful brother?"

Then said the man, "I am one that did enter the bowels of the earth in sore travail, that I might become able to pay a debt I owed. And I got me all the silver which I required, yea and much more also,

and behold, even as I sought to save the silver and the accomptings from utter destruction, I did come by these hideous scars."

Then said Thrasus Neus, whose name meaneth "New Confidence," "I understand thee who thou art. Thou hast done the best thou couldst: no man more. And indeed it is often thus, my brother; as we strive to get silver and gold, even for the best of purposes, we come off hatefully changed for life and unrecognizable, and nevermore the same men. But suffer me now to assist thee.'

He took him to a place where other good Christians abode, and there left him.

And Conatus remained with the brethren many long days.

CHAPTER XXXI

AT THE END FACE OF THE WALL

Now when Simon, having begun to enter the mine by a strange Compulsion, and having gone past the various openings which led to innumerable galleries, at length had passed the last of these, he found that there were no further pegs whereon to place his feet. And yet he had not come anigh unto the shaft's bottom.

He gazed far up in the way whereby he had descended. And behold, at a mighty distance, there was a tiny circle of sapphire set with glorious stars the opening of the shaft, or pit, against God's sky. Then he heard beneath him a groaning and words of direction shouted, together with foul curses.

And, down below, the vat began to rise in the shaft. It neared him, passed him swiftly, and sailed on up the passage. Some of the blocks of ore began to fall over the edge of the vat, when that was at a great height over him, and to strike, rebounding repeatedly, against the shaft walls. Then his heart was sore afraid, and, looking down, he saw, on the floor of the shaft, a patch of faint light.

So he said, "It is far to that light, but yet, to ascend again I dare not."

So he took a mighty breath and relaxed his hold. When he had recovered his senses, he was lying in the middle of a dim chamber in the rock. And a man, as it seemed of iron, stood over him, belaboring him unceasingly.

So the Jew arose, and the man that had scourged him, both spat upon him and spurned him. Others took away his poor apparel. And they gave him instead thereof (at the first) a breach-clout for

his nakedness. In after years it rotted, like a cerement, away, and fell from him, and never was replaced.

At the present they gave him also a heavy mallet and a chisel. Strange attire for priest of Adonai!

Alas, poor priest!

Then the man that had scourged him (he that had seemed of iron) bade him, with curses, that he should follow in the way wherein he would point with his finger.

Went Simon whithersoever the finger pointed.

And hurrying forms were all about him, some of men and some of women. And all were mostly, or else wholly, naked and were bearing burdens-some, baskets filled with gold-bearing rock, others buckets of ordure. Two men carried the half-corrupted corpse of a young girl.

And they passed (the Jew and his iron guide) through winding tunnels and dim, damp galleries, and exceeding narrow places which slowly arose and yet again suddenly descended, or that widened into torch-lighted chambers and afterward contracted into passages wherethrough the journeyers were wholly fain to creep on hands and knees or wriggle like imprisoned serpents.

There were rooms where tiny shafts came through the roof. Under some of these lesser holes, a fire of wood was burning. Through the shafts that had no fires, the fresh air came.

After a time they reached a room wherein could be heard, but as something far away, a continual sound of multitudinous clicking. And from that they went on further, and the clicking grew louder, until they entered a chamber where hundreds of slaves were hard at hammering little chisels into the walls with wooden mallets.

Took the iron man the Jew to the end-face of the wall. Said he: "Take thy mallet and thy chisel: strike. Cut much ore away. Sleep on this straw. Speak never to any." He shackled a heavy chain on the Jew's ankle, and riveted the furthest link thereof, at a little way apart, into the solid rock.

Now lifted up the Jew his mallet and his chisel, and drave the chisel deep within the stone. And he felt, as he drave that blow, that it was the first of an endless succession of blows. His heart was heavy in his bosom, and he wished he were dead.

As he wrought on in the mine, he began to sorrow because he had not loved enough his dear wife and little boys. He had not had time enough (so he believed) to love them, to speak to them as tenderly as he had wished to do. No time? Why! why should there ever have been a minute for anything else?

And now?

Now there was nothing-God knew-but time. God's priestTink! tink! tink!

Yea, there was time enow.

Tink, tink, tink! Tink-a-tink! Tink-a-tink, tink, tink!

How the multitudes of chisel-voices cried at him! like the sarcastic, eternally unsilenceable tongues of the Nations! "Tink-a-ty-tink! Tink-a-tink-tink. Thou-hast-time-enow! Thou-hast-time-enow, enow! Time enow, enow, enow!" The metallic subdivision of his endless space of imprisonment into moments, each little fraction whereof was a kind of eternity in absolute Gehenna, began to tease and craze the corners of his being. He tried, therefore, solely by way of diversion, to sermonize to himself.

"No time! no time! no time!

"So it will be when time is swallowed in eternity. We shall have had no time!

"I had no time' (we say) 'to love, to live, to bless, to think, to dare, to do. No time! no time!

"No time to pray.

""No time to be just.

"No time to ask forgiveness of a friend. No time, no time-"" He began to believe that strange actual voices were calling out to him amidst the innumerable clickings of the chisels. Then, as he listened more intently, he perceived that the words which he seemed to hear were rhythmic to his own eternal chisel's clicking.

"You-will nev-er leave-this place-alive! You-will nev-er leave, you-will nev-er leave you-will nev-er, nev-er nev-er- You-will nev-er leave-this place-a-live! You-will-"

So went the chisel, accompanied by innumerable other chisels, over and over again, one unending, insane chorus. His heart grew faint and fainter, for he saw that the words must be true.

Well, what of the priesthood now? God, thou didst promise! What sorry hierophant was this, a quivering, nigh naked wretch, with shackles, chisel, mallet, and certain interminable insane fanciesvoices and the like?

God's sacerdos at the end-face of the wall! God's pity upon God's sacerdos!

It came to his mind that the task which Adonai had laid upon him had been too great for even his mountainous shoulders. Who was there, O El-Shaddai, could have stood beneath such a load? Was his flesh of brass, were his bones iron?

God's priest!