It was well after midnight of Saturday when the last gun was fired, and the struggle was over. With lips compressed, and brow furrowed, and with his tongue parched by the pipes he had smoked, Imrie capitulated. On the morrow he would put his life to the test. But when he stood in the pulpit and faced his congregation, awaiting him with courteous expectancy, as it had waited so often, his heart well-nigh failed him. Slowly he let his eyes rove over the throng, brilliant in costume, exuding the indefinable aroma of power and luxury. These men and women of St. Viateur's were the cream of the community. It was no small thing to be the shepherd of such a flock. The silence grew oppressive, while he hesitated. He seemed to look for someone. Finally he found what he sought. His face hardened and his teeth clicked so sharply that those in the pews near at hand could almost hear the sound. Judith was in a seat well back in the church. Good was beside her. Imrie's task had suddenly become far harder, yet even more imperative. He hesitated no longer. He cleared his throat and his eyes wandered, raptly, as of old, into the dim vastness of the rafters. "_Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword_," he said impressively. "Text taken from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, tenth chapter, thirty-fourth verse." He paused at that point, as he had paused Sundays without end, and the congregation, as if at a signal, seemed to settle back and make itself resignedly comfortable against the duty it faced. There was a subdued but general coughing, and the whispering rustle of silks: then a calm hush. But the preacher had not uttered a dozen words before the expectant quiet changed sensibly. It was not his words which caused the change, but his tone. And it was not that his tone was dramatic, but that it was not. The very fact that he spoke with a complete freedom from anything histrionic presented a contrast which amazed. But as the significance of the lesson he was drawing from the text became clear to them, astonishment gave place to an almost ominous, certainly an unsympathetic, attention. Never in his career had he had more heedful listeners. As if magically, the news seemed to have percolated to the most obtuse intelligences that grave matters were transpiring. Once or twice there was a sibilant inrush of breath from some auditor too dumfounded for control. But for the rest there was utter silence. There was not a rustle nor a cough. The congregation of St. Viateur's had changed its character. It was playing a different rôle. It was as if an epicure had bitten caviar and tasted quinine. It waited.