Slowly he went to his desk and looked down upon the work scattered over it. Taking up the two letters he tore them slowly into fragments and dropped them into the waste basket. Then as slowly he turned to his books, touching many of the familiar volumes with a caressing hand. Then he went to the table where lay his church papers and the missionary pamphlets and reports. The envelope from Judge Strong caught his eye. Mechanically he took his hat and went to carry the message to his friends on the other side of the garden. From across the street the old Doctor hailed him but he did not hear. Delivering the envelope, with a few brief words, the minister left his friends and wandered on down the street in a bewildered, dazed fashion, scarce knowing where he went, or why; until he turned in through the gap in the tumble-down fence to the old Academy yard. But he could not stay there. The place was haunted, he could not stay! He turned his face toward the open country, but the fields and woodlands had no call for him that day. It was his little study that called; his books, his work. As one goes to sit beside the body of a dear friend, conscious that the friend he loved is not there, yet unable to leave the form wherein the spirit had lived, so Dan went back to his room, his desk, his books, his papers--that which had been his work. And now the deep passions of the man stirred themselves--awoke. Wild anger, mad rage, seized and shook him. His whole sense of justice was outraged. This was not Christianity, this thing that had caught him in its foul snare! And if the church was not Christian what was Christianity? Was there, indeed, such a thing? Was it all such a hollow mockery? So the Doctor found him in the late afternoon--his great strength shaken by rage and doubt; found him struggling like a beast in the trap. And the Doctor saw that the hour for which he had waited had come. Dan needed him--needed him badly! CHAPTER XL. THE DOCTOR'S GLASSES "'There is no hatred, lad, so bitter as that hatred born of a religious love; no falsehood so vile as the lie spoken in defense of truth; no wrong so harmful as the wrong committed in the name of righteousness; no injustice so terrible as the injustice of those who condemn in the name of the Saviour of the world!'" When Dan, forced into something of his habitual self-control and calmness by the presence of his old friend, began telling the Doctor of the action of the church the other checked him abruptly with, "I know all about that, lad." "You know!" ejaculated Dan. "Certainly I know. Isn't Martha one of the elect? I reckon everybody in the whole town but you knew it before noon of the day after the meeting." Dan muttered something about being a blind fool and the old Doctor answered, "Humph! The fools are they who see too much, boy. Such blindness as yours is a gift of the gods; for Heaven's sake don't let any quack fit you out with glasses!"