Thereupon, with the resolution of one proud of the fact that action is his true sphere the vicar strode boldly to the hatstand in the hall. III AS Mr. Perry-Hennington surged through the vicarage gate in the direction of the village green, a rising tide of indignation swept the morrow’s discourse completely out of his mind. This was indeed a pity. Much was going on around and its inner meanings were in themselves a sermon. Every bush was afire with God. The sun of June was upon gorse and heather; bees, birds, hedgerows, flowers, all were touched with magic; larks were hovering, sap was flowing in the leaves, nature in myriad aspects filled with color, energy and music the enchanted air. But none of these things spoke to the vicar. He was a man of wrath. Anger flamed within him as, head high-flung, he marched along a steep, bracken-fringed path, in quest of one whom he could no longer tolerate in his parish. For some little time now, John Smith had been a trial. To begin with this young man was an alien presence in a well-disciplined flock. Had he been native-born, had his status and position been defined by historical precedent, Mr. Perry-Hennington would have been better able to deal with him. But, as he had complained rather bitterly, “John Smith was neither fish, flesh nor well-boiled fowl.” There was no niche in the social hierarchy that he exactly fitted; there was no ground, except the insecure one of personal faith, upon which the vicar of the parish could engage him. The cardinal fact in a most difficult case was that the young man’s mother was living in Penfold. Moreover, she was the widow of a noncommissioned officer in a line regiment, who in the year 1886 had been killed in action in the service of his country. John, the only and posthumous child of an obscure soldier who had died in the desert, had been brought to Penfold by his mother as a boy of ten. There he had lived with her ever since in a tiny cottage on the edge of the common; there he had grown up, and as the vicar was sadly constrained to believe, into a freethinker, a socialist and a generally undesirable person. These were hard terms for Mr. Perry-Hennington to apply to anyone, but the conduct of the black sheep of the fold was now common talk, if not an open scandal. For one thing he was thought to be unsound on the war. He was known to hold cranky views on various subjects, and he had addressed meetings at Brombridge on the Universal Religion of Humanity or some kindred high-flown theme. Moreover, he talked freely with the young men of the neighborhood, among whom he was becoming a figure of influence. Indeed, it was said that the source of a kind of pacifist movement, faintly stirring up and down the district, could be traced to John Smith.