'It is the Lord! It is the Lord!'
'What is that to us? Why doesn't he speak when he's spoken to? Is he a wooden block? You take care what you do, my girl. You'd be better employed in inducing your friend to answer us. Lord or no Lord. There'd be no trouble if he'd treat us like creatures of flesh and blood. If he'd a spark of feeling in his breast, he'd recognise that the very pitifulness of our condition--our misery, our despair!-- entitles us to something more than the brand of his scornful silence; he'd at least answer yes or no unto our prayers.'
Ada wept as if her heart would break, sobbing out from amidst her grief:
'It is the Christ! It is the Lord Christ!'
Her father, forcing his way to the front door, had summoned assistance. A burly sergeant came marching in.
'What's the matter here? Oh, Mr. Walters, it's you! You're not wanted in here. Out you go--all of you. If you take my advice you'll go home, and you'll get your friends to go home too. There'll be some trouble if you don't take care!'
'Go home? Sergeant, you see that Man? Have you anywhere a tender place? Is there any little thing which, if you had it, would make your life brighter and more worth the living? That Man, by the utterance of a word, can make of your life one long, glad song; give you everything you are righteously entitled to deserve; so they tell me. Go home to the kennels in which we herd when the Christ who has come to release us from our bondage will not move a finger, or do aught to loose our bonds, but, seeing how we writhe in them, stands mutely by? No, sergeant. We'll not go home till we've had a reckoning with Him.'
He stretched out his arm, pointing at the Stranger.
'I'll meet you at another Calvary. You've crucified me and mine through the ages, and would crucify us still, finding it a royal sport at which it were blasphemy to cavil. Beware lest, in return, you yourself are not crucified again.'
When Walters and his associates had gone, the sergeant said, addressing the Stranger: