What a week was that which followed. The whole town was in a ferment, and seethed and boiled in an alarming manner. The choir was large, and many homes had been touched. There was every shade and grade of indignation and disapprobation expressed concerning the minister, from the extreme wrath of Miss Armitage, the first soprano, who thought that "after insulting half his congregation, he ought never to be allowed to show his head in the pulpit again," down to patient old Auntie Barber, who said she knew the minister had been dreadfully put to it, poor dear man; she didn't blame him, but then, if he could have spoken to the young things kind of softly, she would have been dreadful glad. Well, another Sabbath came; and with much fear and trembling we went to church. The minister was in his place as usual; but the long rows of seats behind him were vacant. Not a singer put in an appearance. Here and there through the church were scattered a few of them, seated decorously beside their parents, wearing ominously set lips, which boded silence, so far as they were concerned, but for the most part the choir had followed the example of its leader and remained away from the sanctuary. The hymn was announced, and read; and silence followed; even the new organ was dumb. The young performer thereon had been one of the most efficient whisperers, and was, of course, aggrieved. Deacon Slocumb fumbled for the spectacles with which he saw to read, and exchanged for them the spectacles with which he saw the minister and commenced— "Alas, what hourly dangers rise, What snares beset my way," and suddenly stopped. He had been snared in his haste and perturbation by a long metre tune for this common metre hymn, and it was too long drawn out, even for Auntie Barber, though she quavered in tremulously, on the last word. Of course the members of the choir who were present giggled scornfully, and Joe Slocumb, the wicked, disgraced himself by an audible laugh, but the deacon, red in the face, tried again, and acquitted himself better, and all the congregation lived through that hymn. Stormy times ensued for our church. In fact there was a time when Satan must have gloried in it, so wonderfully did it live up to his ideas of church management.