to a loveless marriage,
induced to such action by a sordid consideration of worldly goods and
gear? Was her sin in bearing a child out of wedlock more terrible than
that of the married woman who shudders at the responsibilities of
motherhood, or evades the travail of love's fulfilment by snuffing out
little lives in embryo? He thought not. He recalled an evening in New
York when he had watched a policeman following a drab of the streets
who sought to evade him and ply her sorry trade in the vicinity of
Herald Square; he remembered how that same policeman had abandoned the
chase to touch his cap respectfully and open her limousine door for
the heroine (God save the mark!) of a scandalous divorce.

"Damn it!" he murmured. "It's a rotten, cruel world, and I don't
understand it. I'm all mixed up." And he went to bed, where, his
bodily weariness overcoming his mental depression, he slept.

He was man enough to scorn public opinion, but human enough to fear
it.

XVI

The heir of the Tyee mills and forests was not of a religious turn of
mind for all his strict training in Christian doctrine, although
perhaps it would be more to the point to state that he was inclined to
be unorthodox. Nevertheless, out of respect to the faith of his
fathers, he rose that Sunday morning and decided to go to church. Not
that he anticipated any spiritual benefit would accrue to him by
virtue of his pilgrimage down to Port Agnew; in his heart of hearts he
regarded the pastor as an old woman, a man afraid of the world, and
without any knowledge of it, so to speak. But old Hector was a pillar
of the church; his family had always accompanied him thither on
Sundays, and a sense of duty indicated to Donald that, as the future
head of the clan, he should not alter its customs.

By a strange coincidence, the Reverend Mr. Tingley chose as the text
for his sermon the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John
from the first to the eleventh verses, inclusive. Donald, instantly
alert, straightened in the pew, and prepared to listen with interest
to the Reverend Mr. Tingley's opinion of the wisdom of Jesus Christ in
so casually disposing of the case of the woman taken in adultery.

"Dearly beloved," the pastor began, carefully placing an index-finger
between the leaves of his Bible to mark the passage he had just read,
"the title of my sermon this Sunday shall be: 'The First Stone. Let
him who is without sin cast it.'"

"Banal, hypocr