But people listened—and with understanding. Some of them cried a little. It made them reminiscent. The man himself, now slipping, had once restored them with great gentleness. All said, "What a pity!" But Hampstead, while he spoke, was steeling himself against the probable desertion of his congregation. He had a feeling that he could win them back if he tried hard enough, but he began to doubt that they were worth winning back. He had really never sought to win them to himself personally; he would not begin now. Instead, he saw himself cast out. The verdict of the church on Monday night would also be "Held to Answer." He saw it coming almost gloatingly, and with a fierce up-flaming of that fanatic ardor which was always in him. The desire came to him to seize upon the position in which he stood as a pulpit from which to deliver a message to the world that greatly needed to be delivered, to say something that his fate and his life thereafter might illustrate, and thus make his public shame a greater witness to the truth than ever his popularity had been. In one of the loftiest of his moods of exaltation, he strode homeward from the church. At ten o’clock, he telephoned the morning papers that at midnight he would have a statement to give out. It contained some rather extravagant expressions, was couched throughout in an exalted strain, and ran as follows: AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE "They tell me that I have stood for the last time in the pulpit of _All People’s_; that on Monday night I shall be unfrocked by the hands that ordained me; for my ministerial standing was created by this church which now proposes to take it away. This act, more than a court conviction, will seem my ruin. I write to say I cannot call that ruin to which a man goes willingly. "It is not my soul that hangs in the balance, but another’s. While this man struggles, I declare again that I will not break in upon him. I can reach out and touch him; but I will not. He will read this. I say to him: ’Brother, wait! Do not hurry. I can hold your load a while until you get the grapple on your spirit.’ "But for saying this, I am cast out. "Men observe to me: ’What a pity!’ I say to you: ’No pity at all!’ "Is a minister who would not thus suffer worthy to be a minister? The conception can be broadened. Is any man? Is an editor worthy to be an editor, a merchant, a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, standing as each must at sometime where the issue is sharply drawn between loyalty and disloyalty to truth or trust,—is any of them truly worthy or truly true, who would not willingly suffer all that is demanded of me?