To his mind, what was the good of having riches and power, if you could not also have love, licence and the loot of the conqueror! He had wrestled with the Lord in prayer; he had been a class-leader and a lay-preacher; he had exhorted and denounced; he had pleaded and proscribed; yet never in all his days of professed religion had a heart for others really moved Joel Mazarine.
He had given now and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of mind which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it for the real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not emptied itself for others, at any time, or anywhere.
He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of Sinai.

It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion.

It was some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was born, pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him a professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and money-maker.

For such a man there never could be peace.
In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except his torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the Cross Trails on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping, sprang up from the roadside and slip-slopped after his wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped--catching the thud of the horses' hoofs, and making its footsteps coincide.
All at once the shadowy figure swung itself up softly and remained for an instant, half-kneeling, in the body of the wagon.

Then suddenly, noiselessly, it rose up, leaned over the absorbed Joel Mazarine, and with long, hooked, steely fingers caught the throat of the Master of Tralee under the grayish beard.