he had been led up to some transfiguring mountain peak of moral eminence.
"It is the highest appeal which could be made to the honor of another," he breathed in tones approaching awe.
"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul."
In a wordless interval, Rollie Burbeck pressed the minister's hand once more and departed, his face still wearing a veiled expression as if he had not quite caught the import of all that had been said.
But neither, for that matter, had the minister; although he was never surer of himself than now, when he ushered his guest out of the side door with a cheery, courage-giving smile, and hastened in to his greatly delayed breakfast.
With a thoughtful air and a feeling of intense satisfaction in his breast, he unfolded his napkin, broke his egg, and sipped his coffee, still with no suspicion that this was the day of all days for him, or that he had just sawed and hammered the cross which might make his title clear to saviourhood.
