very hard. One of them was part owner in a meat market which his partner
kept open on Sunday. The other leased one of the parks where the
baseball games had been played. Other persons in the congregation felt
more or less hurt by the plain way Philip had spoken, especially the
members who took and read the Sunday paper. They went away feeling that,
while much that he said was true, there was too much strictness in the
minister's view of the whole subject. This feeling grew as days went on.
People said Philip did not know all the facts in regard to people's
business and the complications which necessitated Sunday work, and so
forth.

These were the beginnings of troublesome times for Philip. The trial of
the saloon-keeper was coming on in a few days, and Philip would be
called to witness in the case. He dreaded it with a nervous dread
peculiar to his sensitive temper. Nevertheless, he went on with his
church work, studying the problem of the town, endearing himself to very
many in and out of his church by his manly, courageous life, and feeling
the heart-ache grow in him as the sin burden of the place weighed
heavier on him. Those were days when Philip did much praying, and his
regular preaching, which grew in power with the common people, told the
story of his night vigils with the Christ he adored.

It was at this particular time that a special event occurred which put
its mark on Philip's work in Milton and became a part of its web and
woof--a thing hard to tell, but necessary to relate as best one may.

He came home late one evening from church meeting, letting himself into
the parsonage with his night-key, and, not seeing his wife in the
sitting-room, where she was in the habit of reading and sewing, he walked
on into the small sewing-room, where she sometimes sat at special work,