gentlemen," he said pleasantly, and walked toward the front of the boat.
"Some nerve, what!" was a comment that broke out of the group as he passed it. Whether the words were meant for his ears or not, they reached them and caused another smile.
"I'll show them nerve!" he mused, with foolish but very human pride.
Mingling in the crowd which trampled and elbowed its way off the boat, the minister was careful to bear himself with open-eyed good cheer. He kept his chin up, a self-confident smile upon his face, and his eyes roving for a sight of familiar faces. Whenever he caught the eye of an acquaintance, the greeting he bestowed was hearty and betokened a man without the slightest cause for anxiety of any sort.
Nevertheless, it was disturbing to perceive that people rather avoided his eye. Generally quite the reverse was true, and it was rare upon the boat that some one did not approach him and fall into conversation. Yet so subtle is that mysterious psychology of the social impulse that now a mere publication of the fact that he was to be arrested, even accompanied, as it was, by the statement that nobody believed him guilty, had yet sufficient influence to make him shunned. What a silly world it was, after all!
But in making the transfer from the ferry to the suburban train, there was a walk of two hundred feet, with a news stand on the way, and then fresh disillusionment lay in wait for Doctor Hampstead, in the form of a later edition of another Oakland paper.
"CLERIC FLIES ARREST," bawled this headline stridently.
The minister's lip curled sarcastically at sight of this, but he bought the paper, reading as he walked to the
