The bearing of these partisans in itself reflected how they had been solicited, inflamed, and organized. They were there like an army to follow their leader.
Good people, too, some of them! Doctor Hampstead's very best people. Yet to recognize them and their mood gave him a sense of personal power. He believed that he could walk over there and talk to these people ten minutes, and they would break like sheep from the leadership of Brother Burbeck. They would come pressing around him with tears and expressions of confidence. But it was not in John's purpose to do that. He was on trial. If on the record of his life among them, these people could condemn and oust him, his work had been a failure. It was as well to know it.
One thing more the minister took into account. The number of persons who, half in an attitude of aggressive loyalty and half in tearful sympathy had gathered in the tiers behind his own pew was less by half than that massed behind the Burbeck leadership. The issue was not in doubt. It had been decided already,—in the newspapers, in the court room, and in all this busy bell-ringing of the last two days.
And now, having seen as much and reflected as much as has been recorded, Hampstead sat down and slipped a furtive lover's hand along the seat until it found the hand of Bessie, and took it into his with a gentle pressure that was affectionately reciprocated.
But if to the congregation the entry of the minister and the woman of mystery by his side was sensation number one in this evening of sensations, the entry of the Angel of the Chair was sensation number two. Mrs. Burbeck, propelled as usual by Mori, the Japanese, was just appearing at the side door; and this time there was no trundling to the center between two factions. Instead, with Japanese intentness of purpose, and as if he had his instruc-
