THE ACOLYTE
BEFORE we enter upon the events of the Great Journey of
Frater P., during which for six years he voyaged over the face
of the globe in quest of the mystic knowledge of all nations,
it will be necessary here to recount, briefly though it may be,
the circumstances which led up to his entering into communi-
cation with the Order of A.°. A.°.
Born of an ancient family, but a few days after the fifty-
sixth Equinox before the Equinox of the Gods, he was reared
and educated in the faith of Christ as taught by one of the
strictest sects of the many factions of the Christian Church,
and scarcely had he learnt to lisp the simplest syllables of
childhood than his martyrdom began.
From infancy he struggled through the chill darkness of
his surroundings into boyhood, and as he grew and throve,
so did the iniquity of that unnatural treatment which with
lavish and cruel hand was squandered on him. Then youth
came, and with it God’s name had grown to bea curse, and
the form of Jesus stood forth in the gloom of Golgotha, a chill
and hideous horror which vampire-like had sucked dry the
joy of his boyhood; when suddenly one summer night he
broke away from the ghouls that had tormented him, casting
aside the sordid conventions of life, defying the laws of his
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