Even Barry could realize, now, that the rector had picked up the gauntlet thrown down to him by his hostess and her fatuous guest, and stood ready to defend his ideal against all the company. The light in his eye, the color in his cheeks, denoted the spirit and the zeal that were blazing within him. For a moment no one spoke. Mrs. Bosworth sent a warning glance across the table to her husband. Mrs. Farrar's eyes dropped, and her face paled with apprehension. Ruth looked appealingly at her lover, as though to beg him not, at this time, to cross swords with the rector. Even Mrs. Tracy, feeling that the situation was rapidly getting beyond her control, sought some method of gently relieving it. Turning to Barry she said, quietly:
"Now, Barry, don't you and Mr. Farrar get into any argument. It wouldn't be a bit interesting to the rest of us. We're just going to convict Mr. Farrar and Ruth without giving them a chance to make any defense. There, you're convicted, both of you."
"Of what?" asked the rector, smiling again.
"Heaven knows!" responded his hostess. "But I turn you over to Judge Bosworth for sentence."
The judge, falling easily into the drift of Mrs. Tracy's thought, glad to avert what had promised to be a most incongruous and unfortunate incident, rose readily to the occasion.
"Very well," he said. "The sentence of the court is that you, the Reverend Robert Farrar, and you, Miss Ruth Tracy, each pay a visit to Mrs. John Bradley, and undergo an imprisonment in her house at hard labor with her for a period of at least twenty minutes, and that you stand committed to Mr. Tracy's views on church polity until this sentence is complied with."
Westgate broke in at once.
"Your Honor," he said, "my client, Barry Malleson, desires to plead guilty of a similar offense, provided he may receive a similar sentence."
