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,
Wychwood-on-the-Heath, to have taken a personal dislike to him. He
wished to publicly apologize for the injustice he had unwittingly done
to their heads and to their hearts. He now had it from their own lips
that a libel had been put upon them. So far from their wishing his
departure, it was self-evident that his going would inflict upon them
a great sorrow. With the knowledge he now possessed of the
respect--one might almost say the veneration--with which the majority
of that congregation regarded him--knowledge, he admitted, acquired
somewhat late--it was clear to him he could still be of help to them