Percy paused before answering.

“I think these things go in waves,” he said.

“Waves, do you think?” said the other.

“What else?”

Father Blackmore looked at him intently.

“It is more like a dead calm, it seems to me,” he said.  “Have you ever been in a typhoon?”

Percy shook his head.

“Well,” went on the other, “the most ominous thing is the calm.  The sea is like oil; you feel half-dead:  you can do nothing.  Then comes the storm.”

Percy looked at him, interested.  He had not seen this mood in the priest before.

“Before every great crash there comes this calm.  It is always so in history.  It was so before the Eastern War; it was so before the French Revolution.  It was so before the Reformation.  There is a kind of oily heaving; and everything is languid.  So everything has been in America, too, for over eighty years....  Father Franklin, I think something is going to happen.”

“Tell me,” said Percy, leaning forward.

“Well, I saw Templeton a week before he died, and he put the idea in my head....  Look here, father.  It may be this Eastern affair that is coming on us; but somehow I don’t think it is.  It is in religion that something is going to happen.  At least, so I think....  Father, who in God’s name is Felsenburgh?”

Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again, that he stared a moment without speaking.

Outside, the summer night was very still.  There was a faint vibration now and again from the underground track that ran twenty yards from the house where they sat; but the streets were quiet enough round the Cathedral.  Once a hoot rang far away, as if some ominous bird of passage were crossing between London and the stars, and once the cry of a woman sounded thin and shrill from the direction of the river.  For the rest there was no more than the solemn, subdued hum that never ceased now night or day.

“Yes; Felsenburgh,” said Father Blackmore once more.  “I cannot get that man out of my head.  And yet, what do I know of him?  What does any one know of him?”

Percy licked his lips to answer, and drew a breath to still the beating of his heart.  He could not imagine why he felt excited.  After all, who was old Blackmore to frighten him?  But old Blackmore went on before he could speak.

“See how people are leaving the Church!  The Wargraves, the Hendersons, Sir James Bartlet, Lady Magnier, and then all the priests.  Now they’re not all knaves—­I wish they were; it would be so much easier to talk of it.  But Sir James Bartlet, last month!  Now, there’s a man who has spent half his fortune on the Church, and he doesn’t resent it even now.  He says that any religion is better than none, but that, for himself, he just can’t believe any longer.  Now what does all that mean?...  I tell you something is going to happen.  God knows what!  And I can’t get Felsenburgh out of my head....  Father Franklin—–­”