d its worshippers by its destruction. Talk of a beacon on a hill!
You can hardly beat that one.

I wish you could have seen how the wardens and the sidesmen and Mullins,
the chairman of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the thought of it.
Hadn't they said all along that all that was needed was a little faith
and effort? And here it was, just as they said, and they'd been right
after all.

Protest from the insurance people? Legal proceedings to prevent payment?
My dear sir! I see you know nothing about the Mariposa court, in spite
of the fact that I have already said that it was one of the most
precise instruments of British fair play ever established. Why, Judge
Pepperleigh disposed of the case and dismissed the protest of the
company in less than fifteen minutes! Just what the jurisdiction
of Judge Pepperleigh's court is I don't know, but I do know that in
upholding the rights of a Christian congregation--I am quoting here the
text of the decision--against the intrigues of a set of infernal skunks
that make too much money, anyway, the Mariposa court is without an
equal. Pepperleigh even threatened the plaintiffs with the penitentiary,
or worse.

How the fire started no one ever knew. There was a queer story that went
about to the effect that Mr. Smith and Mr. Gingham's assistant had been
seen very late that night carrying an automobile can of kerosene up the
street. But that was amply disproved by the proceedings of the court,
and by the evidence of Mr. Smith himself. He took his dying oath,--not
his ordinary one as used in the License cases, but his dying one,--that
he had not carried a can of kerosene up the street, and that anyway it
was the rottenest kind of kerosene he had ever seen and no more use than
so much molasses. So that point was settled.

Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You
mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not.
Absolutely not. It was not affected in the least, though how anybody who
knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his mind was
in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell. The engaging
of Mr. Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have heard preach in the
new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean Drone's head. It was
merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It was felt very generally
by the wardens that, in these days of specialization, the rector was
covering too wide a field, and that