He might have found some shadow of reason, perhaps, for their fears regarding his friendship for the girl with the bad reputation, had the circumstances been other than they were, and had he not known who it was gave Grace Conner her bad name. But that his friendship for Miss Farwell, whose beautiful ministry was such an example of the spirit of the Christian religion; and that her care for the poor girl should be so quickly construed into something evil--his mind positively refused to entertain the thought. He felt that the visit of his church fathers was unreal. He was as one dazed by an unpleasant dream. To come from the pure, wholesome atmosphere of his home and the inspiring study of the history of the Christian religion, to such a twisted, distorted, hideous corruption of the church policy and spirit, was, to Dan, like coming from God's sunny hillside pastures to the gloom and stench of the slaughter pens. He was stunned by the littleness, the meanness that had prompted the "kindly warning" of these leaders of the church. Slowly he began to see what that spirit might mean to him. No man of ordinary intelligence could long be in Memorial Church, without learning that it was ruled by a ring, as truly as any body politic was ever so ruled. Dan Matthews understood too clearly that his position in Memorial Church depended upon the "bosses" then in control. And he saw farther--saw, indeed, that his final success or failure in his chosen calling depended upon the standing that should be given him by this, his first charge; depended at the last upon these two men who had shown themselves, each in his own way, so easily influenced by the low, vicious tales of a few idle-minded town gossips. As one in the dark--stepping without warning into a boggy hole--Dan groped for firmer ground. As one standing alone in a wide plain sees on the distant horizon the threat of a gathering storm, and--watching, shudders at the shadow of a passing cloud, Dan stood--a feeling of loneliness and dread heavy upon him. He longed for companionship, for someone to whom he could speak his heart. But to whom in Corinth could he go? These men who had just "advised him" were, theoretically, his intimate counselors; to them he was supposed, and had expected, to look--in his inexperience, for advice and help. These men, old in the service of the church--how would they answer his troubled thoughts? He shrugged his shoulders and smiled grimly. The Doctor? He smiled again. Dan little dreamed how much that keen old fisherman already knew, from a skillful baiting of Martha, about the visit of the Elders that afternoon; while his knowledge of Dan's character from childhood, enabled the physician to guess more than a little of the thoughts that occupied the young man pacing the floor of his room. But the Doctor would not do for the young man that day.