"Sure," he was saying, "I'll believe you, and Griffin here, he'll believe you--ain't he just promised you he would?--and there's maybe five or six others'll believe you--but who else is goin' to take your word against what it says in black and white on that paper? And her lookin' into the open grave when she told 'em to set it down? Nope, Bracken, you're through, and it's only a mercy to you that I'm comin' here to be the first one to tell you you are. You can explain till you're black in the face and you can refuse to touch that dough till the end of time, or you can give it to charity--if you're lucky enough to find a charity that'll take it--but, Bracken, it's been hung around your neck like a grindstone and it was a dead woman's hands that hung it there and it makes you altogether too heavy a load for any political organization to carry--you see that yourself, don't you? And so, Bracken, you're through!" But to Bracken's ears now the words came dimly, meaning little. Where he was huddled, he foresaw as with an eye for prophecy things coming to pass much as they truly did come to pass. He saw his wife--how well he knew that lukewarm lady who was not lukewarm in her animosities nor yet in her suspicions!--saw her closing a door of enduring contempt forever between them; he saw the breaking off of his daughter's engagement to that young Scopes, who was the third bearer of an honored name, and his daughter despising him as the cause for her humiliation and her wrecked happiness; he saw himself thrown out of his church, thrown out of his bank, thrown out of all those pleasant concerns in which he had joyed and from which he had rendered the sweet savors of achievement and of creation. He saw himself being cut, being ignored, by those who had been glad to kowtow before him for his favor, being elbowed aside as though he were a thing unclean and leprous. He heard, not Dorgan passing a compassionate but relentless sentence on him and his dearest of all hopes, but rather he seemed to hear the scornful laughter of unregenerate elderly libertines, rejoicing at the downfall of an offending brother exposed at his secret sins; and he seemed to hear derisive voices speaking--"Walking so straight up he reared backwards, and all the time--" "Well, well, well, the church is certainly the place for a hypocrite to hide himself in, ain't it?" "Acting like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, but now just look at him!" "His life was an open book till they found out where the dark pages were stuck together, he, he, he!" Thus and so he heard the scoffing voices speaking. He heard aright too, and as his head went down into his hands, he tasted in anticipation a draft too bitter for human strength to bear.