"It is too much," groaned the young man in real agony of spirit. "Nothing, nothing that is at stake is worth that—can be worth that." For a moment Hampstead was silent. "To be loyal, Rollie, to be true to the highest duty is worth everything." This was what he would have liked to say; it was what he believed; it was what he meant to demonstrate by his course of action; but for the moment he could not say it. Instead, he swallowed hard and looked downward, toying with a paper-knife upon his desk. But his visitor was going now. There was no reason why he should stay, and the minister, as he held open the door, was able to say warningly: "Remember! Not one word for the sake of your mother’s life." "But you," protested the young man, his eyes again staring wildly. "You are to try not to think of me," declared Hampstead, with low emphasis, "except as my own steadfastness in my duty—if I am able to be steadfast—may help you to be steadfast in yours. Rollie! We understand each other?" But the young fellow only shook his head negatively with a growing look of awe and wonder in his eyes, then turned and slipped hastily away. He did not understand this man—the bigness of him—at all; but he found himself leaning on him more and more heavily and felt some spiritual cleansing process digging at the inside of himself like the scrape and bite of a steam shovel. As for the minister, once he was free to think of himself alone, he perceived that Rollie’s story had set him free of silence. It supplied the gap in his knowledge which had made him dumb. There was a real defense which could now be offered. Now, too, that there was again some prospect of vindication, he felt his desire for vindication grow. Up to the present he had waived arraignment on the charge, and had twice secured the customary two days’ postponement of the hearing upon preliminary examination. But immediate action should now be taken. Accordingly he located Judge Brennan at his club by telephone and the Assistant District Attorney Searle at his residence, and without explanation asked that the time for his arraignment and preliminary hearing be set as soon as possible. Next morning the papers presented as the most startling development of the Hampstead Case the fact that the minister had announced himself prepared to go to trial, and the preliminary hearing had been set for Saturday at ten o’clock in Judge Brennan’s court room. Public interest centered, of course, upon the nature of the minister’s defense. There was even observable something like a turn of the tide in his favor. Rumor, suspicion, and innuendo for the time had played themselves out. Shrewd managing editors—keen students of mass psychology that they were—discerned signs that these ebbing cross-currents of doubt and uncertainty might sweep suddenly in the opposite direction, and they were alertly prepared to switch the handling of the news if the popular appetite changed.