Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/491

 struction upon which he had labored and proposed to labor as long as life was in him, no matter what yokes and scars were put upon him. In it he reached the oratorical height of his career, which was not necessarily lofty.

But people listened—and with understanding. Some of them cried a little. It made them reminiscent. The man himself, now slipping, had once restored them with great gentleness. All said, "What a pity!"

But Hampstead, while he spoke, was steeling himself against the probable desertion of his congregation. He had a feeling that he could win them back if he tried hard enough, but he began to doubt that they were worth winning back. He had really never sought to win them to himself personally; he would not begin now.

Instead, he saw himself cast out. The verdict of the church on Monday night would also be "Held to Answer."

He saw it coming almost gloatingly, and with a fierce up-flaming of that fanatic ardor which was always in him. The desire came to him to seize upon the position in which he stood as a pulpit from which to deliver a message to the world that greatly needed to be delivered, to say something that his fate and his life thereafter might illustrate, and thus make his public shame a greater witness to the truth than ever his popularity had been. In one of the loftiest of his moods of exaltation, he strode homeward from the church.

At ten o'clock, he telephoned the morning papers that at midnight he would have a statement to give out. It contained some rather extravagant expressions, was couched throughout in an exalted strain, and ran as follows: