He noted that the gallery was packed, but on the main floor empty spaces stared at him from the central tier of pews. Half of All People’s members must have remained away. John realized with new emotion what this meant: that there were men and women in his congregation who could not see their pastor arraigned like this, who could not bear to witness the rising waves of bitterness, the charges and the counter-charges, the incriminations, the malicious spirit of partisanship which invariably breaks out in times like these. But it meant too that these same soft-hearted folk were also soft in the spine; unwilling to take a stand with him; unwilling to be recorded pro or con upon a great issue like this; people for whom he had done a service so great that they could not now turn down their thumbs against him, yet lacking in the strength of character either to sit as his judges or to cast a vote in his favor. From this thought of jelly-fish the minister turned, almost with relief to where, stretching widely behind the Burbeck pew, was a mass of close-packed faces, with super-heated resolution depicted upon their features. The bearing of these partisans in itself reflected how they had been solicited, inflamed, and organized. They were there like an army to follow their leader. Good people, too, some of them! Doctor Hampstead’s very best people. Yet to recognize them and their mood gave him a sense of personal power. He believed that he could walk over there and talk to these people ten minutes, and they would break like sheep from the leadership of Brother Burbeck. They would come pressing around him with tears and expressions of confidence. But it was not in John’s purpose to do that. He was on trial. If on the record of his life among them, these people could condemn and oust him, his work had been a failure. It was as well to know it. One thing more the minister took into account. The number of persons who, half in an attitude of aggressive loyalty and half in tearful sympathy had gathered in the tiers behind his own pew was less by half than that massed behind the Burbeck leadership. The issue was not in doubt. It had been decided already,—in the newspapers, in the court room, and in all this busy bell-ringing of the last two days. And now, having seen as much and reflected as much as has been recorded, Hampstead sat down and slipped a furtive lover’s hand along the seat until it found the hand of Bessie, and took it into his with a gentle pressure that was affectionately reciprocated.