ischarged. Every
little while some one or another of you is so discharged.* Am I not
right?"

* During this period there were many ministers cast out of
the church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially
were they cast out when their preaching became tainted with
socialism.

This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with the
exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

"It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign."

"Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,"
Ernest answered, and then went on. "So I say to you, go ahead and preach
and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the working class alone.
You belong in the enemy's camp. You have nothing in common with the
working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performed
for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating." (Here
Dr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth.
It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds are
filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You
are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men
of the Swiss Guard.* Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with
your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do not come down to
the working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in
the two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe
me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore,
the working class can do better without you than with you."

* The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of
France that was beheaded by his people.

CHAPTER II

CHALLENGES.

After the guests had gone, father threw himself into a chair and gave
vent to roars of Gargantuan laughter. Not since the death of my mother
had I known him to laugh so heartily.

"I'll wager Dr. Hammerfield was never up against anything like it in his
life," he laughed. "'The courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy!' Did
you notice how he began like a lamb--Everhard, I mean, and how quickly
he became a roaring lion? He has a splendidly disciplined mind. He would
have made a good scientist if his energies had been directed that way."

I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in Ernest Everhard. It
was not alone what he had said and how he had said it, but it was the
man himself