“It is due to our brother and to the audience to state that your minister-elect desires me to make his apologies to this parish for a tardiness which he found to be unavoidable,--morally unavoidable, I might say. And I should observe,” added the moderator, hesitating, “that I have been requested _not_ to explain the nature of the case, but I shall take it upon myself to defy this injunction, and to state that an act of Christian mercy detained our brother. I do not think,” said the moderator, dropping suddenly from the ecclesiastical to the human tone, “that it is every man who would have done it, under the circumstances; and I do not consider it any less creditable for that.” A sound of relief stirred through the house as the moderator sat down. The audience ceased twisting its head to look at the tipsy clock, thus enabling the Ladies’ Aid Association to get that aster wreath for the first time out of mind. Mr. Hermon Worcester’s watch went back to its comfortable fob. A smile melted across the anxious face of Professor Haggai Carruth of Cesarea. The minister-elect reappeared with plumage properly smoothed, and the proceedings of the day set in, with the usual decorum of the denomination. It is not a ceremonious sect, that of the Congregationalism of New England; and its polity allows much diversity upon occasions like these, whose programme depends a good deal upon the preference of the moderator. Bayard’s moderator was a gray-haired, kind-hearted, plain country minister, the oldest man in the Council, and one of the best. It was not his intention to subject the young man to one of the ecclesiastical roastings at that time in vogue, and for the course of events which followed he was not responsible. This was a matter of small moment at the time; but Bayard had afterwards occasion to remember it. He listened dreamily to the conventional preliminary exercises of the afternoon. His mind was in a turmoil which poorly prepared the young man for the intellectual and emotional strain of the day. That scene in the street flashed and faded and reappeared before him, like the dark lantern which an evil hand brings into a sacred place. The blow of the man’s fist upon the child seemed to fall crashing upon his own flesh. Across the crescendo of the chorus of the hymn the cry of the little boy ran in piteous discord. The organ rolled up the oaths of the wharves. While the good, gray-haired moderator was praying, Bayard was shocked to find that the song of the street girl ran through his burning brain. The gaunt Madonna in the window of the drunkard’s home seemed to be stamped--a dark photographic letter-head--upon the license to preach the Christian religion which he was required (with more than usual precision) to produce. “Why,” said a sour voice suddenly at his elbow, “why do you consider yourself a child of God?”