d get the worst of the bargain."

"I don't know about that. I'm not doing any thinking lately. But now, as
we're going to be only fifty miles apart, what's to hinder an exchange
once in a while?"

"I'm agreeable to that," replied Philip's chum; "on condition, however,
that you furnish me with a gun and pay all surgeons' bills when I occupy
your pulpit."

"Done," said Philip, with a grin; and just then Mrs. Strong forbade any
more talk. Alfred stayed until the evening train, and when he left he
stooped down and kissed Philip's cheek. "It's a custom we learned when
in the German universities together that summer after college, you
know," he explained with the slightest possible blush, when Mrs. Strong
came in and caught him in the act. It seemed to her, however, like an
affecting thing that two big, grown-up men like her husband and his old
chum showed such tender affection for each other. The love of men for
men in the strong friendship of school and college life is one of the
marks of human divinity.

CHAPTER VI.

In spite of his determination to get out and occupy his pulpit the first
Sunday of the next month, Philip was reluctantly obliged to let five
Sundays go by before he was able to preach. During those six weeks his
attention was called to a subject which he felt ought to be made the
theme of one of his talks on Christ and Modern Society. The leisure
which he had for reading opened his eyes to the fact that Sunday in
Milton was terribly desecrated. Shops of all kinds stood wide open.
Excursion trains ran into the large city forty miles away, two theatres
were always running with some variety show, and the saloons, in
violation of an ordinance forbidding it, unblushingly flung their doors
open and did more business on that day than any other. As Philip read
the papers, he noticed that every Monday morning the police court was
more crowded with "drunks" and "disorderlies" than on any other day in
the week, and the plain cause of it was the abuse of the day before. In
the summer time baseball games were played in Milton on Sunday. In the
fall and winter very many people spent their evenings in card-playing or
aimlessly strolling up and down the main street. These facts came to
Philip's knowledge gradually, and he was not long in making up his mind
that Christ would not keep silent before the facts. So he carefully
prepared a plain statement of his belief in Christ's standing on the
modern use of Sunday