"Stand up, Griff Lomax, and come to the front, and tell them all what a man did to you on the brink of Whins Quarry."
But Griff made no movement, and the preacher told his own story.
"The seed of jealousy was set in this man, and it grew in the space of a single day, till he was ripe for blows—nay, for worse. He waited for his friend at the edge of the quarry-face, and murder was in his heart."
"Glory, glory!" shouted a woman at the rear of the chapel. She was in the throes of her own personal need for salvation, and her shout of joy came with a weird irrelevancy.
"The man was myself," went on Gabriel, "and the friend that I waited for was Griff Lomax, whom I had loved as my own brother—ay, as David yearned over Jonathan I had loved the lad. But the seed of hate was planted, and grew apace. He came along by the path at the quarry-side, and I closed with him. The devil had gripped my heart; I forgot that the edge was close behind us; I cared for nothing in heaven or hell but vengeance. The devil strengthened my arms. I lifted the lad and threw him over my shoulder."
"Hallelujah! Found Jesus, found Jesus!" yelled a weather-beaten quarryman, seated under the pulpit.
Gabriel paused and dashed his hand across his forehead; the sweat ran off in a stream and dripped to the pulpit ledge. A hoarse murmur went from lip to lip of the listening crowd.
"I heard the rumbling of stones as he went over the brink, and then a splash in the pool at the bottom."
Every eye turned to Griff, sitting with a rigid face, like one returned from the dead. A superstitious awe gained on the folk; they were ripe to credit a miracle in their present exalted state.
"I ran down the hill and fell, and lay in a swoon for a while," went on the preacher. "When I went to the pool, there was no body there, and I pictured him lying in the mud at the bottom—lying, and waiting till the trump of the Judgment Day called him to tell what he knew."