The Archbishop looked at him with extreme hauteur. "My dear sir, I leave these matters to my subordinates. I am here as an administrator, not as a minister." "And you always choose the men best fitted to be ministers?" "Of course. At any rate, I hope so," quoth the Archbishop. "That young curate who has so successfully played the evangelist in Gorseshire--he will have one of your earliest nominations, then, no doubt?" "Indeed, he will not! He has offended me deeply. Would you believe it? he wrote an article on me in one of the reviews, and he actually had the audacity, sir, to criticize me unfavourably! I will see that the man remains exactly where he is!" "And when you by-and-by make your report to your Master, will you explain to Him your methods and your aims in this way? If so, do you think He will be satisfied with you? Your methods and His are at variance, surely? In heaven there are neither archbishops nor bishops, as such. If they pass the gates at all, it is merely as men who have done their duty. Do you think you will pass the gates on that score, your Grace?" The Archbishop rang the bell sharply and abruptly. "Please show this gentleman out!" said His Grace. * * * * * "So you persist in disowning your daughter?" asked the man, looking hard at the portly, pleasant-faced matron who was dandling her thirteenth infant on her knees. "You will show her no mercy, now she asks it at your hands?" "She has disgraced me--I will never forgive her!" said the woman. "Let her starve with her brat. It will be well when they are dead." "She has disgraced you, you say? But has she disgraced Nature? I thought it was Nature who was responsible for her sex and its instincts. She has obeyed the one and fulfilled the other. And they have been paramount considerations with you also, I perceive." "Did she owe no duty, then, to her parents? Was I to count in her life merely as the soil to the plant?" "In the scales of justice, as I saw them adjusted in heaven, the claim against the parents weighed the heaviest," said the man. "You suckled her at your breasts; but you brought her there to suckle. In your bringing her there, lies the onus of her claim." "I tell you, she has disgraced me, and I will never forgive her!" "_'Never'_ is a long day for a mortal. You will be judged yourself before you reach the end of it," said the man. * * * * * "Three months' imprisonment with hard labour," said the magistrate. "For taking a loaf of bread when he was starving!" cried the man. "Even so," said the magistrate, with his hands on his paunch. "But surely this is a monstrous perversion of justice. Or, rather, let me call it a monstrous _in_justice!" "The laws of the community must be respected," said the magistrate.