THE WARING PROBLEMS I With few exceptions, the incidents recorded in these pages take place in one of the largest cities of the United States of America, and of that portion called the Middle West,—a city once conservative and provincial, and rather proud of these qualities; but now outgrown them, and linked by lightning limited trains to other teeming centers of the modern world: a city overtaken,... more...

CHAPTER I. IN THE SPRING.   "Let no one ask me how it came to pass;  It seems that I am happy, that to me  A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,  A purer sapphire melts into the sea." Eleanor could not stay away from the Wednesday meetings at Mrs. Powlis's house. In vain she had thought she would; she determined she would; when the day came round she found herself drawn with a... more...

CHAPTER I. The Ranger. "Glory to God! another sinner's down! Glory! Hallelujah! Amen; Pray on, brother; you'll soon be through. Glory! Glory!" These words were shouted by two young men and a young woman who were returning through the Kentucky woods from a camp meeting. They were riding in a smart spring wagon drawn by two good horses. The young man who was not driving would fall into... more...

RETRIBUTION I The Bishop's House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth, bright red brick and large, plate-glass windows, situated in a plot at the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when as yet no definite types had emerged... more...

CHAPTER I. THE STRANGER. IT was corn-planting time, when the stranger followed the Old Trail into the Mutton Hollow neighborhood. All day a fine rain had fallen steadily, and the mists hung heavy over the valley. The lower hills were wrapped as in a winding sheet; dank and cold. The trees were dripping with moisture. The stranger looked tired and wet. By his dress, the man was from the world beyond the... more...

CHAPTER I. HOW I FIRST HEARD OF THE MAID. "The age of Chivalry--alas!--is dead. The days of miracles are past and gone! What future is there for hapless France? She lies in the dust. How can she hope to rise?" Sir Guy de Laval looked full in our faces as he spoke these words, and what could one reply? Ah me!--those were sad and sorrowful days for France--and for those who thought upon the... more...

CHAPTER I The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds... more...

PROLOGUE THE CHILD "The fangs of the she-wolf are whetted keen for Galilean flesh and else the wrath of Jehovah palsy the arm of Rome, Galilean soil will run red with blood from scourged backs ere the noon of a new day." The speaker, a slender woman wearing the garb of a peasant, lowered a water-jar from her shoulder and stood beside the bench of a workman, who paused at his task to get news... more...

THE ARRAIGNMENT I Looking backward, Hodder perceived that he had really come to the momentous decision of remaining at St. John's in the twilight of an evening when, on returning home from seeing Kate Marcy at Mr. Bentley's he had entered the darkening church. It was then that his mission had appeared to him as a vision. Every day, afterward, his sense and knowledge of this mission had grown... more...

Life had indeed become complicated, paradoxical. He, John Hodder, a clergyman, rector of St. John's by virtue of not having resigned, had entered a restaurant of ill repute, had ordered champagne for an abandoned woman, and had no sense of sin when he awoke the next morning! The devil, in the language of orthodox theology, had led him there. He had fallen under the influence of the tempter of his... more...