The Greater Testimony that had lain so heavily on the congregation went flaming to its end, and burned up its debts and its obligations and enriched its worshippers by its destruction.Talk of a beacon on a hill! You can hardly beat that one.
I wish you could have seen how the wardens and the sidesmen and Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the thought of it.Hadn't they said all along that all that was needed was a little faith and effort? And here it was, just as they said, and they'd been right after all.
Protest from the insurance people? Legal proceedings to prevent payment? My dear sir! I see you know nothing about the Mariposa court, in spite of the fact that I have already said that it was one of the most precise instruments of British fair play ever established.Why, Judge Pepperleigh disposed of the case and dismissed the protest of the company in less than fifteen minutes!
Just what the jurisdiction of Judge Pepperleigh's court is I don't know, but I do know that in upholding the rights of a Christian congregation--I am quoting here the text of the decision--against the intrigues of a set of infernal skunks that make too much money, anyway, the Mariposa court is without an equal.Pepperleigh even threatened the plaintiffs with the penitentiary, or worse.
How the fire started no one ever knew.There was a queer story that went about to the effect that Mr.Smith and Mr.Gingham's assistant had been seen very late that night carrying an automobile can of kerosene up the street.But that was amply disproved by the proceedings of the court, and by the evidence of Mr.Smith himself.
He took his dying oath,--not his ordinary one as used in the License cases, but his dying one,--that he had not carried a can of kerosene up the street, and that anyway it was the rottenest kind of kerosene he had ever seen and no more use than so much molasses.So that point was settled.
Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not.
Absolutely not.It was not affected in the least, though how anybody who knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his mind was in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell.
The engaging of Mr.Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have heard preach in the new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean Drone's head.It was merely a case of the pressure of overwork.It was felt very generally by the wardens that, in these days of specialization, the rector was covering too wide a field, and that if he should abandon some of the lesser duties of his office, he might devote his energies more intently to the Infant Class.That was all.
You may hear him there any afternoon, talking to them, if you will stand under the maple trees and listen through the open windows of the new Infant School.
And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for attention well, if Iwant to find listeners who can hear and understand about the great spaces of Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to face with the blue eyes of the Infant Class, fresh from the infinity of spaces greater still.Talk of grown-up people all you like, but for listeners let me have the Infant Class with their pinafores and their Teddy Bears and their feet not even touching the floor, and Mr.
Uttermost may preach to his heart's content of the newer forms of doubt revealed by the higher criticism.
So you will understand that the Dean's mind is, if anything, even keener, and his head even clearer than before.And if you want proof of it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the Greek: he has told me that he finds that he can read, With the greatest ease, works in the Greek that seemed difficult before.
Because his head is so clear now.
And sometimes,--when his head is very clear,--as he sits there reading beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond, and his wife's voice.
