man get into the study and neither you
nor the girl know it."

"I did hear a noise, and that is what started me upstairs. And he may be
in the house yet. I shall not rest easy until you look into all the
closets and down cellar and everywhere."

So Philip, to quiet his wife, searched the house thoroughly, but found
nothing. The servant and the minister's wife followed along at a
respectful distance behind Philip, one armed with the poker and the
other with a fire-shovel, while he pulled open closet doors with
reckless disregard of any possible man hiding within, and pretended to
look into the most unlikely places for him, joking all the while to
reassure his trembling followers.

They found one of the windows in Philip's study partly open. But that
did not prove anything, although a man might have crawled in and out
again through that window from an ell of the parsonage, the roof of
which ran near enough to the window so that an active person could gain
entrance that way. The whole affair remained more or less a mystery to
Philip. However, the letters and the knife were real. He took them down
town next day to the office of the evening paper, and asked the editor
to publish the letters and describe the knife. It was too good a piece
of news to omit, and Milton people were treated to a genuine sensation
when the article came out. Philip's object in giving the incident
publicity was to show the community what a murderous element it was
fostering in the saloon power. Those threats and the knife preached a
sermon to the thoughtful people of Milton, and citizens who had never
asked the question before began to ask now: "Are we to endure this
saloon monster much longer?"

As for Philip, he went his way the same as ever. Some of his friends and
church members even advised him to carry a revolver and be careful about
going out alone at night. Philip laughed at the idea of a revolver and
said: "If the saloon men want to get rid of me without the trouble of
shooting me themselves they had better make me a present of a
silver-mounted pistol; then I would manage the shooting myself. And as
for being careful about going out evenings, what is this town thinking
of, that it will continue to license and legalize an institution that
makes its honest citizens advise new-comers to stay at home for fear of
assassination? No. I shall go about my work just as if I lived in the
most law-abiding community in America. And if I am murdered