aviour, too. I wonder if he can afford it? Gad, what a pack of
falsehoods that woman has poured into me! She always had a gift of
circumstantial lying. I believe, if Lionel had kept a tight rein on her
and shown her the whip now and then--but what's the use of speculating?
Anyway, it's rough on the Parson, and if I hadn't to consider Dick and
the girls--"

Dusk had given way to gaslight, and Parson Jack still paced the streets,
intending but still deferring to find a dinner and a night's lodging.
He had shaken hands with Major Bromham in a mood of curious exaltation.
He had decided almost without a struggle. To his mind the question was
a clear one of right and wrong, and no argument helped it. Still, a man
does not renounce five thousand pounds every day of his life; and, when
he does, has some right to pat his conscience on the back. He derived
some pleasure, too, from picturing the pretty gratitude with which his
beneficiaries would hear Major Bromham's message. He did not know Mrs.
Flood.

But . . . his church? He had forgotten it, or almost forgotten; and the
recollection came upon him like a blow. He halted beneath a gas-lamp in
dismay; not in resentment at the shattering of his dream, for he
scarcely thought of himself; not in doubt, for he had done rightly, and
his church could not be restored at the expense of right; but in sheer
dismay before the blank certainty that now his church must fall.
Nothing could save it. He must go home to it, live with it, watch it to
the inevitable end. He put out a hand against the iron pillar, and of a
sudden felt faint, almost sick. As a matter of fact, he had eaten
nothing since his early breakfast.

A few doors down the street the bright lamp of a tavern--the Sword and
Flag--caught his eye. He tottered in and asked for a glass of brandy.
It did him good, and he called for another. Some soldiers entering,
with a girl or two, and finding a clergyman seated with his glass in
this not over-reputable den, began to chaff. He answered gently and
good-naturedly, but with a slight stutter--enough to hint at fun ahead;
and they improved upon the hint. By nine o'clock Parson Jack was silly
drunk; at eleven, when the premises were closed, the police found him
speechless; and the rest of the night he spent in the borough lock-up.

V.

It appeared in the newspapers, of course. "Deplorable story: A
clergyman fined for drunkenness." This was more than even Sir