She had been sitting on her haunches blinking at him when he raised his voice or gestured, and the crowd has never yet gathered on this earth in the temple of Baal or Jehovah that can resist a cat accompaniment to the functions of a priest. When Gordon looked the little cat full in the face, she liked him at once, and in the softest, friendliest treble said: "Meow!" And the crowd burst into incontrollable laughter. At first the full import of the situation did not reach his mind, he was so stunned with surprise. He stood looking at the cat in helpless stupor, and blushing red. And then the sickening certainty crushed him that the day was lost; that it was beyond the power of human genius, or the reach of the spirit of God, to remove that cat and regain control of his audience. He turned sick with anger and humiliation, and his big bear-like hands clasped his sheet of notes and slowly crushed them. He continued to look at the cat and she cocked her head to one side, opened her yellow eyes wider and, slowly, in grieved accents said: "M-e-o-w!" Which unmistakably meant, "I'm very sorry you don't like me as well as I do you." Again the crowd laughed. Gordon stepped backward and bent slowly over the cat. She did not look very bright, but she was too shrewd for that movement. The crowd watched breathlessly. He grasped at her. She sprang quickly to one side, bowed her back, bushed her tail, and scampered across the platform crying: "Pist! pist!" and ran up the column that supported the end of the gallery. The preacher's empty hand struck the bare floor, and the crowd was convulsed. A young man sitting in the gallery near the column caught the cat as she climbed over the rail, ran to a window and was about to throw her down to the pavement twenty feet below. Gordon lifted his hand and cried: "Don't do that, young man--don't hurt her; bring her here." It had, suddenly occurred to the preacher as he watched Van Meter bending low in his pew overcome with laughter, that he had stooped to this contemptible trick to defeat him and make the solemnest hour of life ridiculous. He knew the Deacon had come to the church earlier than usual. He was sure he had done it. A curious smile began to play about his lips, and a cold glitter came into his steel-gray eyes. He took the cat in his arms and stroked her gently. She purred and rubbed her face against his and moved her feet up and down, sheathing and unsheathing her claws in his robe with evident delight. The crowd grew still. Instinctively they knew that something big was happening in the soul of the man they were watching. "This little cat, my friends," he said, "is an innocent actor in a tragedy this morning, but she is the agent of one who is not innocent." He fixed his gaze on Van Meter, who stirred with uneasy amazement.