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Red put down his knife and fork and joined his wife at the window, pushing aside the muslin curtains and leaning across the girl's big sewing machine. There certainly was an unusual stir abroad and startling shouts and cries upon the wind! And yet Red could see the three yellow crocuses and the two purple crocuses in their patch of garden that had been there yesterday and the green paint that he had put on their little gate in the afternoon.

“High'd give ten pounds for this 'ere bloomin' flood to 'it the bewger's bloody bridge and soak the cligh till the bewger's bleedin' new road falls in! But it'll be pore men what'll suffer, girlie; not rich ones like 'im, if these 'ere waters rise hup and hover.”

Sally put her plump arm affectionately round his neck. “You never loved Miss Crummie like you love me, did you, Red?” she whispered coaxingly. "Garni* cried Red.

They were both silent then, Sally thinking to herself, “Shall I ever dare to ask him about Jenny Morgan? And what should I do if Jenny Morgan came to see Mother?” and Red thinking to himself, “High wouldn't care a wriggle what 'appened to this bastard commune, has long has the bewger got it in 'is bleedin' neck!”

This passive trance of Red and Sally at their window was interrupted by the inrush through Red's green gate of a couple of excited neighbours: “Jenny Morgan be drowned in flood,” they cried, “and little Nelly be clinging, fit to perish, to her mother's corpsy.”

Sally Robinson turned quickly to her husband. “We must go down there, Red,” she said.

Red sighed heavily, but he did not gainsay her words-Long before the flood had reached the point at which Red and Sally were called upon to confront it, the Mayor of Glastonbury was making his way dry-shod to his morning lecture at Chalice Hill. Before his wife and Crummie were out of bed and before any sign of the incoming water had reached the end of Street Road, Bloody Johnny was hurrying in blind excitement, with his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back, to his beloved Rotunda. His own word for all the buildings on Chalice Hill was simply Town's End—an old Montacute name which helped to make him feel at home there. “I'm off to Town's End, my precious,” he would say to Mrs. Geard; or “I'll be back from Town's End, my sweet, by tea-time today, never fear!”

On this historical morning the Mayor's head was so full of a new inspiration which he had received, or dreamed he had received, from his Master that night, that he had not even paused in his kitchen to make himself a cup of tea before setting out. It would be a mistake to assume, as some afterwards did, that Bloody Johnny was oblivious of the perils of the waters that just then threatened Glastonbury. The man was like some desperate mediaeval artist, some frantically inspired craftsman who, even though the enemy is at the gates of his city, must, by an urge that endures no* withstanding, complete his unfinished statue, his picture, his fresco, his molten cast. To enter into the real heart of what he had been feeling during the last forty-eight hours it would be necessary to remember that the man had for weeks, nay, for a couple of months, dropped all active connexion with the administration of that tiny dictatorship of which he was the technical head. What he felt in his mind now was only an intensified awareness of what he had been vaguely feeling ever since that momentous opening of his Saxon Arch. “The Lord's going to let me take my life,” he kept saying to himself, “and I must finish my work before I go.” What he thought of as his “work” was the rounding off and completion of his Fifth Gospel, delivered to all and sundry at Town's End.

Had the flood been accompanied by a fire, had the flood and the fire been accompanied by a murderous uprising of the mob, and that again by signs and portents, by thunderings and lightnings, in air and sky, Bloody Johnny would still have hurried off to his heathen Academia. He had hardly slept at all that night; and now quite heedless of the rumours of the broken dams, heedless of the overcrowded state of the threatened town, heedless of any danger that might be threatening his wife and menacing his daughter, thinking always in his heart: “My end is near and I must finish my work before I go”—Mr. Geard arrived at Chalice Hill. He found himself, before he knew what he was doing, helplessly fumbling at the closed door of Mrs. Jones' tea-booth, which stood not far from his Saxon arch. Mrs. Jones, however, like most of the Glastonbury people, was far from sharing the Mayor's indifference to the overwhelming catastrophe that was imminent that fatal day. It began to look as if Bloody Johnny's craving for tea—which his sleepless and rather feverish night had rendered extreme—was not destined to be satisfied. By good luck, however, young Elphin Cantle and his friend Steve Lew had slept together that night in Solly's loft above the St. Michael's Garage. Mat Dekker had shaken his head of late very gravely over what he called “that young degenerate's seduction of such a wholesome lad,” but without avail. Elphin was a more slippery customer than Tommy Chinnock! Young Cantle at this moment Jiad the key to his father's little booth among this assemblage of acquisitive wooden shanties and the two boys had already got their kettle boiling in this little shelter, and were just beginning to enjoy their bread and jam when they heard the Mayor thumping at the door of Mrs. Jones' ramshackle storehouse.

Elphin peeped out. “It's Master Geard!” he whispered excitedly to his friend. "And he be all white and shivery. He've a heerd summat. He've a heered the girt flood. He be come to tell Mother Jones she best climb up Tor-top wi' he!'1

Steve Lew stood up with wide-open eyes. His mouth was full of bread and jam, but he was too agitated to masticate or even to swallow. The wild and extravagant thought rushed through his head that perhaps Mr. Geard would condescend to share their amateur repast. “It would ... be fine, Elph, wouldn't ”tin,“ ho blurted out, ”if Mayor drank a cup o1 tea along wi' we?"

Elphin sighed. He had anticipated the pleasure of uninterrupted colloquy with his young friend when he had strengthened his heart with raspberry jam. He wished the Mayor of Glaston-bury at the devil! Why was fate always snatching the few hours of romance which he had in life away from him? It had been like this when he was with Mr. Sam. Someone was alwa^/s interrupting!

Elphin stood hesitating in the doorway now, one agitated eye upon the obese, bare-headed man, who was now muttering to himself and gazing hopelessly around, and one upon his stuttering and excited friend. But the Mayor of Glastonbury had caught sight of him.

“Do 'ee know where a man could get a sip of hot tea, me boy?” he enquired humbly, almost in the tone of a thirsty tramp.

Elphin scowled savagely; but his sense of honour compelled him to report the great man's request to the boy in the hut. “He be asking for summat hot,” he whispered.

Steve swallowed his mouthful so hurriedly that it almost choked him, and rushed to the door. “Please come in here, Sir!” he cried, pushing his friend unceremoniously out of the way, “Me and Elph be having a bite, us be, and us 'ud be proud to give 'ee all!”

Bloody Johnny responded to this invitation with alacrity and his gratitude and good temper when he had eaten and drunk were so winning that even the jealous heart of Elphin Cantle was beguiled. Sounds of such lively merriment soon began to emerge from the Cantle beer-shop that the little crowd of early visitors who had already assembled in front of the Saxon arch got the impression that the master—rumour soon told them where he was—had been drinking all night in that shanty. This story, that on the morning of the fifteenth, the day above all others when ihe man's wits should have been clearest, he was found hopelessly drunk “in company with two degenerate slum-boys” spread all over Somerset before the end of the week and was mixed up in the most hopeless manner with the official accounts of the Glastonbury flood. But Bloody Johnny thanked his young entertainers with a pure heart and a clear head and made his way into his Rotunda. He paused for a moment, however, to speak with Young Tewsy whose cadaverous grin above his neat corduroy suit suggested a death's head in the attire of an operatic forester.

“Mother Legge 'ad 'er breakfast upstairs, and her bided upstairs,” the old man reported.

It was astonishing how full of people the Rotunda was when Bloody Johnny finally pushed his way to his uncomfortable throne and took up his mystical discourse where he had left it the day before. It was a relief to him on this occasion, when he was obsessed by the idea that he had had a special Revelation, to notice that there were a couple of young men from his own Wayfarer in the corner of the Rotunda armed with the most professional-looking notebooks. “He knows his business,” he thought, “that Middlezoy lad. I'd 'a never have supposed he'd send 'em to Town's End when flood be rising.”

Slowly he let his formidable black eyes glance over his audience. There seemed to be a predominance of Welsh people there this morning, judging from the rising inflexion of the excited murmurs that he caught from many parts of the crowded circle. “I expect being mountaineers they know nothing of floods!” he thought. “I hope they'll all get safe home.” And then he became aware of Young Tewsy standing at his elbow.

“Flood be rushing down 'igh Street, your Wash'p! Town council be meetin' in Church so as to be near tower in case of accidents. Town-crier We been sent round to tell the toreigners to take to the 'ills; and they've a-commanded every boat there be on river, and Mr. Trent and Mr. Spear and Mr. Dekker and the fire-brigade men and the Boy Scout lads be taking folk from their 'ouse-windies and carrying of they to the foot of Wirral. Old Bob Sheperd be waiting outside, your Wash'p, for to take 'ee to where town council be.”

“Tell Sheperd not to wait for me, Tewsy,” whispered the Mayor. “Tell him to tell them I'll come later, when I've finished what I have got to do here. Tell him to tell them to telegraph for boats to Taunton and Bridgewater and every town with a river; and do it quickly—before the wires are down. Tell them to telephone to Bristol if the wires aren't down and make 'em send a dozen airplanes with bread and wine and milk straight to Wirral Hill; and tell 'em that they can make a landing beyond those trees up there, though it's rather difficult. But I knoiv it's possible—tell 'em—because I've seen poor Barter do it whec he piloted Crow.” He paused for a moment while the wrhispe.ing in the audience rose to an agitated pitch. “Are the trains nnning still, Tewsy ? ” he enquired. ^ *

“They wasn't when I left 'un, your Wash'p, and th”10 -nere waters be mountin' up hour by hour. No trains 'ull lea £ .ston today, your Wash'p. If I were the council, meesr s e ' send town-crier round to say that all foreigners what M- -*£«'*., of any kind leave this town at onst on pain of being shot."

The Mayor chuckled at this; and the audience looked at each other and smiled. They were evidently thinking to themselves: “He must have heard that the floods are going down, or he couldn't take things so easy.”

Young Tewsy went off to convey his message, or what he could remember of his message, to Bob Sheperd.

Bloody Johnny pulled himself up upon his feet by the carved oaken arms of his great chair. He felt languid, indolent, weighed down by a “whoreson lethargy.” In the manner of a lazy monk, in some perfunctory office that he has repeated so often that his mind can think of other things while his lips utter the sacred iacantations, he turned his back to the audience and faced the altar. Candles were burning on the altar, by the side of Crummie's primroses, and in the chilly light which floated in beneath the majestic, drowsy, heavy-jowled Saxon Kings and Saints—for Geard of Glastonbury had kept his word and it was the Saxon element that predominated in the Rotunda—he shut his eyes tight and repeated the formula: “Christ give strength to our souls, so that we may drink up Life and defy evil. Blood of Christ give us peace. Blood of Christ give us rest. Blood of Christ give us joy forever!” These words Mr. Geard uttered in the mechanical tone of one who has so much faith in the magic of the syllables that he has no need to intellectualise them or to emotionalise them. Some of the audience remained seated while this invocation took place; others stood up, a very few fell upon their knees. But Mr. Geard swung round now and sat down, pulling the bearskin over his thighs for he suddenly felt cold.

It was the man's extraordinary sangfroid, his heavy, languid aplomb that many people found to be so effective. To the Welsh element in this particular audience, itself so highstrung and excitable, this unruffled phlegm of the prophet was profoundly impressive.

“T\ fc^yrt I bad reached in my argument, my dears,” he beg^yf CS> ^o do with the souls of microscopic insects/' This persle aL£- £to his hearers as “my dears” always had a very queef^y kei^ S30. people heard it for the first time. The sturdy, virile, meA$2c hearers were often so shocked and felt such deep resentment and distaste that the man lost them completely. They became enemies for life, from the moment when the word “dears” left his mouth; but others felt exactly the opposite, felt, in fact, a responsive tenderness towards Mr. Geard. “You often hear people say,” he went, “that insects have no souls. Now what Christ came and told me this very night is that every insect, down to the smallest mite, microbe or bacillus, has an immortal soul. It must have been about half-past two last night that the Master told me about insects having souls. I know it was about then, because I'd heard the Church clock strike two. And I asked him if worms, and such things as slugs and snails had souls. 'Every Jack one o' them, Sonny,' he said, 'every Jack one o' them.' All these souls, my dears, the Master explained to me, though perishable in relation to the visible, are imperishable in relation to the invisible. They do not . . . as the heathen poet says . . . die all. Something in them sinks down and escapes into the undersea of undying Being. Bodies are only one expression of souls; and when the bodies of worms and gnats and zoophytes, yea! of the smallest amcebse that exist, perish in this dimension, something, perduring and indestructible, that has been the living identity of these tiny creatures, escapes into the dream-world whose margins overlap ours. This other world, this invisible dimension, is as much a dream-world as our own. Into this sequence of dream-worlds our souls drive us forward, drinking up Life and struggling with evil; seeking rest and peace. To ask where can there be space, where room, for all the myriads of consciousnesses, spawned by the life-stream since our planet began, is to ask a babyish question! Space and time, such as we know them, have no meaning in this other dream-world into which the undying souls of all dead organisms pass. Christ's Blood, my dears, is the life-sap that pours forth when any organism, pierced by the thorns of this troublesome dream, passes into the one that surrounds it. Out of this deeper dream tfy vre fell of old upon our Glastonbury Something that bewilders and troubles us unto this day. To approach it gives us a sho^or,a Per” turbation, a spasm, a shudder of the life-nerves. None^of touch it without a fit of travail-throes, an ecstasy of sW[ she-.sanity. None can take it up wholly into themselves and ^n .£ j touch this Thing at all is to drink up Life at its source. Such a draught renders us strong as* lions. Fortis imaginatio general causes, as the old Schoolman says; and with wills thus fortified we can drink up day and night from all things in the world—from the winds and the rains, from earth and fire and water and air—the Blood of the Eternal! And the Master told me more than this, my dears. Be we men or women, He said, our souls can embrace the sweet bodies of one another till flesh and blood yield up their essences. Only good can come, my,dears, from every embrace. It matters not at all from what cups, or from what goblets, we drink, so long as without being cruel, we drink up Life. The sole meaning, purpose, intention, and secret of Christ, my dears, is not to understand Life, or mould it, or change it, or even to love it, but to drink of its undying essence! Drinking up Life in this manner, we become more and more identified with that in us which death cannot kill, with that in us which sinks down, through dream after dream of what passes away, into . . , into . . . into something, my dears, that is • . . something that is . . . is . . . the Blood and the Water and the . . ."