In  my  tenderer  years,  when  I  had  broken  one  of  the  command-
ments on  my  father's  tablet  (there  were  more  than  ten),
and  had,  on  his  home-coming,  been  sent  to  bed,  my  mother
would  come  softly  upstairs  after  supper  with  a  book  in  her
hand;  a  book  of  selected  Bible  stories  on  which  Dr.  Pound
had  set  the  seal  of  his  approval,  with  a  glazed  picture  cover
representing  Daniel  in  the  lions'  den  and  an  angel  standing
beside  him.  On  the  somewhat  specious  plea  that  Holy
Writ  might  have  a  chastening  effect,  she  was  permitted  to
minister  to  me  in  my  shame.    The  amazing  adventure  of


10  A  FAR  COUNTRY

Shadrach,  Meshach  and  Abednego  particularly  appealed  to
an  imagination  needing  little  stimulation.  It  never  occurred
to  me  to  doubt  that  these  gentlemen  had  triumphed  over
caloric  laws.  But  out  of  my  window,  at  the  back  of  the
second  storey,  I  often  saw  a  sudden,  crimson  glow  in  the  sky
to  the  southward,  as  though  that  part  of  the  city  had  caught
fire.  There  were  the  big  steel-works,  my  mother  told  me,
belonging  to  Mr.  Durrett  and  Mr.  Hambleton,  the  father  of
Ralph  Hambleton  and  the  grandfather  of  Hambleton
Durrett,  my  schoolmates  at  Miss  Caroline's.  I  invariably
connected  the  glow,  not  with  Hambleton  and  Ralph,  but  with
Shadrach,  Meshach  and  Abednego !  Later  on,  when  my
father  took  me  to  the  steel-works,  and  I  beheld  with  awe  a
huge  pot  filled  with  molten  metal  that  ran  out  of  it  like
water,  I  asked  him  —  if  I  leaped  into  that  stream,  could
God  save  me?  He  was  shocked.  Miracles,  he  told  me,
didn't  happen  any  more.
"When  did  they  stop?"  I  demanded.
"About  two  thousand  years  ago,  my  son,"  he  replied
gravely.
