een forced to the conclusion that five-sixths of his parishioners had
loved him from the first without hitherto having had opportunity of
expressing their real feelings.

The eventful Sunday arrived. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe had been
kept so busy listening to regrets at his departure, assurances of
an esteem hitherto disguised from him, explanations of seeming
discourtesies that had been intended as tokens of affectionate regard,
that no time had been left to him to think of other matters. Not till
he entered the vestry at five minutes to eleven did recollection of his
farewell sermon come to him. It haunted him throughout the service.
To deliver it after the revelations of the last three days would be
impossible. It was the sermon that Moses might have preached to Pharaoh
the Sunday prior to the exodus. To crush with it this congregation of
broken-hearted adorers sorrowing for his departure would be inhuman.
The Rev. Augustus tried to think of passages that might be selected,
altered. There were none. From beginning to end it contained not a
single sentence capable of being made to sound pleasant by any ingenuity
whatsoever.

The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe climbed slowly up the pulpit steps
without an idea in his head of what he was going to say. The sunlight
fell upon the upturned faces of a crowd that filled every corner of
the church. So happy, so buoyant a congregation the eyes of the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe had never till that day looked down upon. The
feeling came to him that he did not want to leave them. That they
did not wish him to go, could he doubt? Only by regarding them as a
collection of the most shameless hypocrites ever gathered together
under one roof. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe dismissed the passing
suspicion as a suggestion of the Evil One, folded the neatly-written
manuscript that lay before him on the desk, and put it aside. He had
no need of a farewell sermon. The arrangements made could easily be
altered. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe spoke from his pulpit for the
first time an impromptu.

The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe wished to acknowledge himself in the
wrong. Foolishly founding his judgment upon the evidence of a few
men, whose names there would be no need to mention, members of
the congregation who, he hoped, would one day be sorry for the
misunderstandings they had caused, brethren whom it was his duty
to forgive, he had assumed the parishioners of St. Jude's,
Wychw