hat I am myself. I give you back
gladly what you have given me. I am no longer your pastor. We are well
quit. Even while I have preached to you, I have seen in your hearts your
scorn and your distrust, and I have hated you in secret. But I throw off
the cloak. I remove the disguise. Here I stand stripped of everything
save the fact that I am a man; and I despise you openly. Yes, old Tom,
drunken Tom Brent's son despises you. Go home. Go home. There may be
work for your stench-loving nostrils there."

He stood like an avenging spirit, pointing towards the door, and the
people who had sat there breathless through it all rose quietly and
slipped out. Simpson joined them and melted into the crowd. They were
awed and hushed.

Only Mrs. Hodges, white as death, and her husband, bowed with grief,
remained. A silent party, they walked home together. Not until they were
in the house did the woman break down, and then she burst into a storm
of passionate weeping as if the pent-up tears of all her stoical life
were flowing at once.

"Oh, Fred, Fred," she cried between her sobs, "I see it all now. I was
wrong. I was wrong. But I did it all fur the best. The Lord knows I did
it fur the best."

"I know you did, Aunt Hester, but I wish you could have seen sooner,
before the bitterness of death had come into my life." He felt strangely
hard and cold. Her grief did not affect him then.

"Don't take on so, Hester," said the old man, but the woman continued to
rock herself to and fro and moan, "I did it fur the best, I did it fur
the best." The old man took her in his arms, and after a while she grew
more calm, only her sobs breaking the silence.

"I shall go away to-morrow," said Brent. "I am going out into the world
for myself. I 've been a disgrace to every one connected with me."

"Don't say that about yoreself, Fred; I ain't a-goin' to hear it," said
Eliphalet. "You 've jest acted as any right-thinkin' man would 'a'
acted. It would n't 'a' been right fur you to 'a' struck Brother
Simpson, but I 'm nearer his age, an' my hands itched to git a hold o'
him." The old man looked menacing, and his fist involuntarily clenched.

"'Liphalet," said his wife, "I 've been a-meddlin' with the business o'
Providence, an' I 've got my jest desserts. I thought I knowed jest
what He wanted me to do, an' I was more ignorant than a child. Furgive
me ef you kin, Fred, my boy. I was tryin' to make a good man o' you."

"There 's nothing for me to