Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/414

 Up to the present he had waived arraignment on the charge, and had twice secured the customary two days' postponement of the hearing upon preliminary examination. But immediate action should now be taken. Accordingly he located Judge Brennan at his club by telephone and the Assistant District Attorney Searle at his residence, and without explanation asked that the time for his arraignment and preliminary hearing be set as soon as possible.

Next morning the papers presented as the most startling development of the Hampstead Case the fact that the minister had announced himself prepared to go to trial, and the preliminary hearing had been set for Saturday at ten o'clock in Judge Brennan's court room.

Public interest centered, of course, upon the nature of the minister's defense. There was even observable something like a turn of the tide in his favor. Rumor, suspicion, and innuendo for the time had played themselves out. Shrewd managing editors—keen students of mass psychology that they were—discerned signs that these ebbing cross-currents of doubt and uncertainty might sweep suddenly in the opposite direction, and they were alertly prepared to switch the handling of the news if the popular appetite changed.