Surtaine asked of Douglas.

"We invited all the ministers," was the low response. "I understood he
was seriously ill."

"He is a trouble-maker. Tell Harkins not to let him talk."

Douglas spoke a word in the chairman's ear.

"There's a motion before the house--I mean the meeting," began
Congressman Harkins, when the voice behind him cut in again, hollow and
resonant:

"Mr. Chairman."

"Do you wish to speak to the question?" asked the chairman uncertainly.

"I do."

"No, no!" called Douglas. "Out of order. Question!"

Voices from the seats below supported him. But there were other calls
for a hearing for the newcomer. Curiosity was his ally. The meeting
anticipated a sensation. The chairman, lacking a gavel, hammered on the
stand with a tumbler, and presently produced a modified silence, through
which the voice of the Reverend Norman Hale could be heard saying that
he wished but three minutes.

He stepped to the edge of the platform, and the men below noticed for
the first time that he carried in his right hand a wreath of
metal-mounted, withered flowers. There was no mistaking the nature of
the wreath. It was such as is left lying above the dead for wind and
rain to dissipate. Hale raised it slowly above his head. The silence in
the hall became absolute.

"I brought these flowers from a girl's grave," said the Reverend Norman
Hale. "The girl had sinned. Death was the wage of her sin. She died by
her own hand. So her offense is punished. That account is closed."

"What has all this to do--" began the chairman; but he stopped, checked
by a wave of sibilant remonstrance from the audience.

The speaker went on, with relentless simplicity, still holding the
mortuary symbol aloft:--

"But there is another account not yet closed. The girl was deceived. Not
by the father of her unborn child. That is a different guilt, to be
reckoned with in God's own time. The deception for which she has paid
with her life was not the deception of hot passion, but of cold greed.
A man betrayed her, as he has betrayed thousands of other unfortunates,
to put money into his own pockets. He promised her immunity. He said to
her and to all women, in print, that she need not fear motherhood if she
would buy his medicine. She believed the promise. She paid her dollar.
And she found, too late, that it was a lie.

"So she went to the man. She knew him. And she determined either that he
should help her or that she would be revenged on