Monday had always been for him a play day. Usually he started off in the morning for a long tramp, and since he had established his friendly, homelike relations with Nancy, oftener than not he made it a point to walk into her living room at half-past four or five for a cup of tea. Reuben Cowder usually made it a point, too, to get home by five on Mondays, knowing Dick would be there, for Reuben Cowder had grown fonder as the months went by of the young parson, and sometimes he said to himself, "I wish it were Dick and not Otto that she cared for. What a son he would make." This habit of Dick's was known to Patsy. Patsy had been stirred to wrath by the echoes that had reached her before night of Sunday and all through Monday morning of Dick's pro-Germanism. What utter stupidity, she had said. Of course it's nothing but a reaction from the uplift they have been wallowing in. Angry as she was at the thought of any criticism of Dick, she was willing to slur even the spirit which had taken possession of the town and in which she as much as Dick had rejoiced. And to Patsy as to Dick, the only real alarm in the outbreak was that it would reach Nancy and that she might be influenced. For Patsy you see had come to believe that the two were in love. "I think, Little Ralph," she said, talking aloud to the baby, "it's time for your mother to take a decisive hand. He was the best friend your father ever had. If it had not been for him you would not have been here, little boy. If Nancy Cowder doesn't love him, she ought to. At least she is not going to be turned against him now by this senseless gossip." And so Patsy, whose anguished heart was becoming braver and braver day by day in service to others, arrived at the McCullon farm just about the time that Nancy came in from camp. "I have come to lunch, Nancy," Patsy announced. "I want to know if you have heard what Sabinsport is doing to Dick." "Doing to Dick?" Nancy cried, turning white. "Why, what do you mean?" "She does care!" Patsy said to herself. "They are doing a cruel thing; they are accusing him of treason--he--he who has led us all into the light, who showed Ralph the way, who gave me Ralph. They are badgering him, heckling him, Nancy. And all out of their stupid, stupid, wicked, revengeful spirits." "But what--what do you mean?" Nancy cried, still white and trembling. And Patsy, having made her impression, put aside her eloquence, and told her what she knew of the sermon that had aroused resentment in the town. As she went on, relief, tenderness, amusement chased one another across Nancy's unconscious face.