appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched the
rattle with what sounded like a faint echo; then there was sudden
silence. The entire audience turned and looked disparagingly,
discouragingly, at the man who had figuratively risen as a champion of
the scandalous recitation. Resentment had taken hold of the good
Christians. That Crusader had enlisted their sympathies for a few
minutes showed the dangerous subtlety of this "horseracin' business"

The rest of the programme might just as well have been eliminated; the
concert, as a concert, would be discussed for all time to come as having
projected "The Death of Crusader."

The people flowed from the church full of an expressive contentiousness,
seeking by exuberant condemnation of the sacrilege to square themselves
somehow with their consciences for the brief backsliding.

Where the church path turned into the road a group of men had drawn
together, attracted by the magnet of discussion. They quite blocked the
pathway, oblivious to everything but their outraged feelings. Like a
great dark blotch in the night the group stood; and presently two slight
gray shadows slipping up the path, coming to the human barricade,
stopped, wavered, and circled out on the grass to pass. The shadows
were Allis Porter and her brother Alan.

One of the men, overfilled with his exceeding wrath, seeing the girl,
gave expression to a most unchristian opinion of her modesty. The sharp
ears of the boy heard the words of the man of harsh instinct, and his
face flushed hot with resentment. He half turned, bitter reproach
rising to his lips. How could men be so brutish? How could they be so
base? To speak ill of his sister Allis, who was just the purest,