ss comparatively
small town like Slowbridge, what must be going on in great cities
like London? Moreover, everything is done to make it attractive for
the unhappy youth who is thus lured away from his father's hearth.
My own son is even now still impenitent, and I have the greatest
fears for his moral and religious future, so rapid has been the
corruption set up by evil companionship.

These, my lord, are the facts set out as shortly as possible and
written on the eve of my departure in circumstances that militate
against elegance of expression. I am, to tell the truth, still
staggered by this affair, and if I make public my sorrow and my
shame I do so in the hope that the Society of which your lordship
is President, may see its way to take some kind of action that will
make a repetition of such an outrage upon family life for ever
impossible.

Believe me to be,

Your lordship's obedient servant,

Eustace Pomeroy.

The publication of this letter stirred England. _The Times_ in a leading
article demanded a full inquiry into the alleged circumstances. _The
English Churchman_ said that nothing like it had happened since the days
of Bloody Mary. Questions were asked in the House of Commons, and
finally when it became known that Lord Danvers would ask a question in
the House of Lords, Mr. Ogilvie took Mark to see Lord Hull who wished to
be in possession of the facts before he rose to correct some
misapprehensions of Lord Danvers. Mark also had to interview two
Bishops, an Archdeacon, and a Rural Dean. He did not realize that for a
few weeks he was a central figure in what was called THE CHURCH CRISIS.
He was indignant at Mr. Pomeroy's exaggeration and perversions of fact,
and he was so evidently speaking the truth that everybody from Lord Hull
to a reporter of _The Sun_ was impressed by his account of the affair,
so that in the end the Pomeroy Abduction was decided to be less
revolutionary than the Gunpowder Plot.

Mr. Lidderdale, however, believed that his nephew had deliberately tried
to ruin him out of malice, and when two parents seized the opportunity
of such a scandal to remove their sons from Haverton House without
paying the terminal fees, Mr. Lidderdale told Mark that he should recoup
himself for the loss out of the money left by his mother.

"How much did she leave?" his nephew asked.

"Don't ask impertinent questions."