Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/397

 The young man gave his mother a gentle pressure of his hands upon her shoulders, then turned his face and kissed her cheek, but ventured no word. A sense of blood guiltiness had come upon him at the contact of her presence.

"Of course you have seen what that woman and the papers are doing to Brother Hampstead," his mother observed sadly.

"Yes," replied the young man, in a tone as dejected as hers.

"They are tearing his reputation to pieces," the mother went on. "There is hardly a shred of it left now. Like vultures they are digging over every detail of his life and putting a sinister interpretation upon the most innocent things. The worst of it is that even our own people begin to turn against him. Some of the people for whom he has done the most and suffered the most are readiest with their tongues to blast his character. It is a sad commentary upon the way of the world."

"Still," urged Rollie, "the man is strong; his character is so upright; his purposes are so high and so unselfish that no permanent harm can come to him. His enemies must sooner or later be confuted, and he will emerge from all this pother—" Pother: it took great resolution for Rollie to force so large a fact into so small a word—"a bigger and a more influential man in the community, even a more useful one than before."

Mrs. Burbeck listened to this tribute from her beloved son to her beloved minister with a joy that was pathetic. She had never known him to speak so heartily, with such unreserved admiration before. It told her things about the character of her son she had hoped but had not known. Yet she felt herself compelled to disagree with her son's conclusions.

"That is where you are wrong, my boy," she said,