rt sternly. "You have said more than enough
already. Good morning." He turned on his heel and went a couple of
steps, then something struck him and he faced round again. "May I
venture one suggestion? Next time you preach you might take as your
text, 'He amongst you who is without sin, let him throw the first
stone,'" and he stalked down the platform, leaving the canon bereft of
even a trace of his well-known pulpit manner.

CHAPTER XXXI

Jimmy did not attempt to go back to the cottage. Instead, he walked very
slowly up the street towards the hotel, the door of which he was just
entering when the Grimmer motor-car dashed past with the Canon sitting
very erect in the tonneau. As a matter of fact, that grave personage had
eventually entered the refreshment-room, feeling he needed something to
steady his nerves after such a trying interview. True, the brandy did
restore him a little, but the memory of Jimmy's words remained. He never
forgot them, and, as his wrath subsided, they began to affect him in
another way, making him ask himself whether, after all, he had read some
of his Master's words aright. As time went by, the matter troubled him
more and more--it is always a serious thing when a man past middle age,
and a dignitary of the Church at that, begins to think--and when, a year
later, Vera became engaged to the son of one of his own church-wardens,
a young City man of exemplary life and undoubted wealth, he was
conscious of a distinct sense of disappointment. He would have liked a
son-in-law who would have understood his new point of view. He married
them himself, in the blatantly new church with the sprawling texts round
the chancel arch; and the world, his world, congratulated him. But on
the following Sunday he preached a sermon which shocked his congregation
beyond measure, and really cost him that bishopric; for he took Jimmy's
suggested text, and argued, with an eloquent fire, quite alien to his
nature, that if the Master was ready to forgive, His followers must do
the same.

Ida voiced the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she
said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too
terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind."

But her new husband, Mr. Tugnell, himself a candidate for orders, the
owner of the living having promised that he should succeed the canon,
expressed the more general view, when he said sharply, "Nonsense, my
dear, the m