There were people, too, a few, who protested against Belgium's resistance to Germany. Dick was not surprised to hear that a certain important pillar on the financial side of his own flock had decried the sacrifice as "impractical." "All very well to be brave," he said, "but one should distinguish in important matters in this life between the practical and impractical. I call this foolish resistance--couldn't possibly hold that army, and if they had let it pass they would have been paid well. Foolish waste of life and property I call it." But the gentleman ceased his talk after listening a few times to the strongly expressed contempt of those of his colleagues who did not fear him for his gospel of honor when practical. Whatever the dissent, the protest, the argument, Dick had a feeling that it was weighed and that it tipped the scale of opinion not the hundredth part of an ounce more than it was worth. It seemed to him sometimes that he was looking at a mixture of chemicals watching for a crystallization--would it come true to the laws in which he had faith? And it did; whatever the fact and fancy, the logic and nonsense, poured into Sabinsport's head, a sound sensible view came out. His satisfaction in the popular opinion of the town, as he caught it in his running up and down, was the deepest of his troubled days. And the Reverend Richard Ingraham's days were full of trouble. There was Ralph Gardner--his dearest friend. They were not getting on at all. The war had broken in on Ralph's schemes for regenerating Sabinsport at a moment when her open indifference to her own salvation was making him furious and obstinate. It had cut off all possible chance for a campaign. It filled the air with new sympathies and feelings. It thrust rudely out of field matters to which men had been giving their lives. It demanded attention to facts, relations, situations, ideas that until now were unheard of. Insist as Ralph did in the _Argus_ and out that the war was the affair of another hemisphere, it continued to force his hand, challenge his attention, change the current of the activities which he held so dear. As the days went on it grew in importance, engulfed more and more people, began to threaten ominously the very existence of the town itself.