“Yes, boys,” he said, “the Preacher is a great man, but his wife is greater. She’s the handsomest woman in the state in spite of a grey thread or two in her rich chestnut hair. She has the most beautiful mouth that ever tempted the soul of a man--and boys, my lips know what it means to touch it.” And when they stared with open eyes at this statement, McLeod shook his head, laughed and whispered, “Say nothing about it--but facts are facts!” McLeod chuckled over the certainty of the shame and suffering that would wring the Preacher’s heart when dirty gossips of a village had magnified these words into a complete drama of scandal. For all preachers McLeod had profound contempt, and he felt secure now from personal harm. The day the Preacher first heard of these rumours was the occasion of Gaston’s campaign address under the old oak in the square. He had looked forward to this day with boyish pride mingled with a great fatherly love. It would be his triumph. He had stirred this boy’s imagination and moulded his character in the pliant hours of his childhood. He had told himself that day he spent with him in the woods fishing, that he had kindled a fire in his soul that would not go out till it blazed on the altar of a redeemed country. And he was living to see that day. The streets and square were thronged with such a multitude as the village had never seen since it was built. But the Preacher was not among them at the hour the speaking began. A simple old friend from the country asked him about these rumours. He turned pale as death, made no answer, and walked rapidly toward his study in the church where his library was now arranged. He was dazed with horror. It was the first he had heard of it. One thing in his estimate of life had always been as securely fixed and sheltered in his thought as his faith in God, and that was his love for his wife, and his perfect faith in her honour. He closed his door and locked it and sat down trying to think. Had he not grown careless in the certainty of his wife’s devotion, and his own quiet but intense love? Had he not forgotten the yearning of a woman’s heart for the eternal repetition of love’s language of sign and word? The tears were in his eyes now, and he felt that his heart would beat to death and break within him! He saw that his enemy had struck at his weakest spot, and struck to kill. He lifted his face toward the walls in a vague unseeing look and his eyes rested on a pair of crossed swords over a bookcase. They had been handed down to him from a long line of fighting ancestors. He arose, took them down mechanically, and drew one from its scabbard. How snugly its rough hilt fitted his nervous hand grip! He felt a curious throbbing in this hilt like a pulse, it was alive, and its spirit stirred deep waters in his soul that had never been ruffled before. He recalled vaguely in memory things he knew had never happened to him and yet were part of his inmost life.