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348 jeers and curses and the crack and crash of churchly furniture. And out from the doors of this profanated house had issued a riotous and bloodthirsty mob, bent on destroying the property if not the lives of some of the most law-abiding and God-fearing citizens of the city or the state. What degradation! What unheard of sacrilege!

And in the midst and at the height of this disgraceful riot which he had done so much to precipitate, what a spectacle this discredited priest had made of himself! Alternately appealing to and denouncing the reckless mob that surrounded him, he had aroused only their scorn and resentment, until one of them, more daring than his companions, had felled the offending minister with a common brick. Disgusting enough, indeed! But that was not the worst of it; oh, by no means! For, as he lay sprawling and unconscious on the steps, surrounded by rioters and ruffians, had not a woman of the lower class, a socialist, an anarchist, an atheist, a consorter with desperate characters, a woman whose vulgar husband had been scarce six months dead, had not she rushed to his side, and embraced him, and kissed him, and wept over him, and shrieked to the crowd that he was the only man she had ever loved?

But when they reached this dramatic climax of the clergyman's degradation, the scandalized gossips spoke in whispers lest some one, overhearing them, should charge them with spreading unclean tales.

Had the rector of Christ Church known the things that loose tongues were saying of him, had he known what had happened after he fell unconscious on the office steps—for no one had yet had the hardihood to tell him, and the newspapers, with becoming decency, had failed to publish the incident—would he have gone into his pulpit that April morning to preach to his people the gospel of a sinless Christ? It is not to be doubted. For he would have felt in his heart that he was guiltless and without stain, and, as yet, he had not