d growing circle wherein
the old families revolved but seldom, but the errant orbits of Eastern
stars were quick entangled; and some few years after their marriage a
new and gorgeous edifice having been erected by the congregation of St.
Jude's, and a daughter having been born to Barnard, the man of money
heard without surprise and with little resistance his wife's change of
faith in revealed religion. St. Jude's, a parochial offspring of old and
established St. Paul's down-town, had become an ecclesiastical necessity
in the growing north side. The Cranstons transferred their pew, as did
others, to follow a favorite rector and his gospel closer to home. Mrs.
Barnard experienced a long projected change of heart because the
acknowledged leaders of the social circle herded thither, and Barnard
followed as his wife might lead. The great memorial window in the south
transept, through whose hallowed purpling the noon-day sunshine
streamed rich and mellow on the gray head in that prominent central pew,
was the devout offering of Thomas Barnard and Almira, his wife, in
testimony of their abandonment of the faith of their fathers and the
adoption of that which in school days they had held to be idolatrous.
Wilbur Cranston well recalled how in his school days Tom Barnard's
honest, sturdy form went trudging by at nightfall from the long day's
labor with the railway gang of which he was "boss," but Tom was a
division superintendent when the lawyer's boy came home from West Point
on furlough just as the war dogs began their growling along the border
States. And now Tom Barnard owned all the tenth ward and most of the
railroad, did he? And it was Tom Barnard's wife, a fair, fat penitent in
sealskin and sables, who drove by in such a magnificent sleigh and style
to humble herself at the altar by the side of such as we, whose social
shoes she was as yet held unworthy to unlatch? Wilbur remembered how
once, some years before, when his father's affairs were straitened and
his own were cramped, when Meg and the baby actually and sorely needed
change, but she sturdily refused to leave him and go East because of the
expense, he had bethought him of Tom Barnard, the rising railway man,
and wrote him a personal note explaining the situation and asking
through his influence if such a thing as a pass for himself and wife
could be obtained over certain roads east of the Missouri, and the
answer came, written by a secretary, brief and to the point.