Chapter XV: Set of Moon

On a night at mid-December, in a darkened room, Daniel Brendon sat writing laboriously. The candle beside him was shielded so that the light should fall only on his papers, on a copy of the "War Cry," and on his Bible. In a corner were two beds, side by side, and his boy occupied the smaller one and slept peacefully there. Upon a chair by the little bed Gregory's clean clothes were placed for the morrow. A small scarlet jersey hung close by, and beside it a very large one, that Daniel would wear.

Brendon had joined the Salvation Army and was captain of the Lydford Branch. Indeed, he had founded this branch, and worked like a giant by night and day to increase its strength. Twenty-five persons were already numbered.

He rose up and stretched his arms; then sat down and read through the notes that he had made. To-morrow the man would preach from the twelfth chapter of Job and the twenty-second verse.

"He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death."

The child laughed in his sleep and then was still again. A clock struck four.

Brendon appeared to be much aged; he did not spare himself in his unceasing struggles for his God. Only at such moments as this, in the waste of night, when life's pulses burned low; when his own agony surged high; when human powerlessness to stem the tide of the world's grief was most borne in upon his spirit, did he waver and look forward hungrily to the end. For a moment now he put his great hands over his face and longed for the time when the dust of the workshop should be still, the dust of the workman at rest.

John Prout and his sister received all Woodrow's money--a sum sufficient for their needs until life's end. Brendon had sold Ruddyford; and the payment, in shape of notes, he burnt. Now he fought under the banner of the new sect that already foreshadowed its coming power.

He rose presently, gazed upon the night and started at what he saw.

"Blood and Fire in heaven too!" he thought.

Behind the mass of Lydford castle a moon, just short of fall, was sinking amid vast clouds. Some were very dark and some were luminous; some, while circled with flame, yet moved in masses unutterably black. The firmament seemed troubled by this conflagration. The setting moon, surrendering her silver, took upon her bosom the tinctures of earth; and the stormy clouds burnt with her stained radiance. Above them the light exhaled and shot upward into heaven, where stars shone through the vaporous floor of the sky. Orion wheeled his far-flung glories westward and followed the red moon.

The wonder of this silent and nocturnal pageant endured awhile; then it slowly died away. The planet flashed a farewell ruby above the edge of the world, and dreamless darkness brooded upon earth for a little space before the dawn.

THE END

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.