“But I say, old man, what on earth is all this jargon you wrote me about, the return of the Christ, and——”
He paused suddenly. His eyes had just caught sight of the great placard. His gaze was riveted on it. He read the two words aloud:—
“To-day? Perhaps!”
In a voice of wondering amaze, he gasped:—
“What’s that, Tom? What does it mean?”
Tom Hammond repeated, in a few sentences, what he had previously written to his friend, as to his conversion, then, passing on to the subject of the Lord’s second coming, he said:
“I am so impressed, Ralph, with the imminence of our Lord’s return, that I have had that placard done to arrest the attention of callers upon me, and give me an opportunity of speaking to them about their eternal destiny. To-day, too, I have been impressed so with the necessity of speaking to the world—“The Courier’s” world, I mean of course—on this great, this momentous subject, that I have made it the subject of my ‘Prophet’s Chamber’ column.”
He gathered up the sheets of his M.S. he had written, and passed them over the table to Ralph Bastin.
“You will see, I have written it in the most simple, almost colloquial style, Ralph,” he said. “I wanted it to be a man’s quiet, earnest, simple utterance to his fellow man, and not a journalist’s article.”
Ralph Bastin’s eyes raced over the papers. His face was a strange study, while he read, reflecting a score of different, ever-changing emotions, but amid them all never losing a constant deepening amaze.