voice, "that
we all go in a body to Brother Whaley and lay the matter before him.
Grave charges have been preferred against him as a consistent church
member, and a proposition has been made to turn him out. I hold that he
deserves at least a chance to make a statement--show his side, if he has
got one, even before it goes to the official board. Most of you contend
that he was aware of what he was doing from the start."

"Of course he knowed!" cried out another man, who was a shoemaker and
bore the marks of his trade on his hands. "Wasn't that contractor
hand-in-glove with him, and didn't Cavanaugh know the whole thing as
plain as the nose on his face? I know a man that went straight to
Brother Whaley and told him this Trott was an atheist, and my informant
offered to bring sworn evidence of all that Trott had said on that line,
the most damnable talk, by the way, that hell ever had spouted in our
midst."

"Oh, I'm admitting that part," the wizen-faced little man piped in. "I
admit all that, Brother Tumlin. Brother Whaley had heard of that, but it
seems that Cavanaugh persuaded him to gloss it over and leave the fellow
in Tilly's hands for gradual conversion to the truth; but as to the
other matter--the thing that is too dirty to talk about even here to you
men while Sister Suggs is out of the room--"

"He knew that, too," broke in the shoemaker, angrily. "How could he keep
from it? We got it, didn't we? Isn't Trott's mother notorious?"

"I'm not disputing that," the little man went on. "All I want to set
forth is that, even though Brother Whaley thinks he is the only man in
seven states that can interpret Scripture right and does know
considerable on that line, he is entitled to a fair show from us."

"I wonder, brethren"--it was Mrs. Suggs who now appeared, wiping her fat
hands on her blue-and-white checked apron--"I wonder if I might be
allowed to put in a bare word right here?"

Silence prevailed. A look of vague dissent passed over the solemn faces.
Suggs pulled at his stubby chin whiskers and knitted his bushy brows.
"If I'm chairman," he said, dryly, "I may or may not, according to my
discretion, permit Sister Suggs to speak; but as her husband, brethren,
I think if I don't give her a chance she will make it hot for me, so if
she will promise to fetch in some more cold cider right off I'll let her
speak."

"Oh yes, let her," a voice said in a drowsy tone from the horsehair sofa
in a corner. "In my time I