Samuel had had nothing to eat since morning, but he did not feel hungry. He was faint from grief and despair. To encounter a man of the world like Mr. Wygant, cold and merciless and masterful—that was a terrible ordeal for him. The man seemed to him like some great fortress of evil; and what could he do, save to gaze at it in impotent rage?
He went home, and Sophie met him at the door. “I thought you wanted an early supper, Samuel,” said she.
“Why?” he asked dully.
“You had something to do at the church tonight!”
“Yes,” he recollected, “there's to be a vestry meeting, and I have to light up. But I'm tired of the church work.”
“Tired of the church work!” gasped the child. “Yes,” he said. And then to the amazed and terrified family, he told the story of his day's experiences.
Sophie listened, thrilling with excitement. “And you went to see Mr. Wygant!” she cried in awe. “Oh, Samuel, how brave of you!”
“He ordered me out of his house,” said the boy bitterly. “And Dr. Vince has gone back on me—I have no one at all to help.”
Sophie came to him and flung her arms about him. “You have us, Samuel!” she exclaimed. “We will stand by you—won't we mother?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Stedman—“but what can poor people like us do?”
“And then you have Miss Gladys!” cried Sophie after a moment.
“Miss Gladys!” he echoed. “Will she take my part against her own father?”
“She told you that she loved you, Samuel,” said the child. “And she knows that you are in the right.”
“I will have to go and see her,” said Samuel after a little. “I promised that I would come and tell what happened.”
“And I will see her, too!” put in the other. “Oh, I'm sure she'll stand by you!”
The child's face was aglow with excitement; and Samuel looked at her, and for the first time it occurred to him that Sophie was really beautiful. Her face had filled out and her color had come back, since she had been getting one meal every day at the Wygant's. “Don't you think Miss Gladys will help, mother?” she asked.
“I don't know,” said Mrs. Stedman dubiously.
“It's very terrible—I can't see why such things have to be.”
“You think that Samuel did right, don't you?” cried the child.
“I—I suppose so,” she answered. “It's hard to say—it will make so much trouble. And if Miss Gladys were angry, then you might lose your place!”
“Oh, mother!” cried Sophie. And the two young people gazed at each other in sudden dismay. That was something they had never thought of.
“You mustn't do it, Sophie!” cried the boy. “You must leave it to me!”
“But why should you make all the sacrifices?” replied Sophie. “If it's right for you, isn't it right for me?”
“But, Sophie!” wailed Mrs. Stedman. “If you lost this place we should all starve!”
And again they stared at each other with terror in their eyes. “Sophie,” said Samuel, “I forbid you to have anything to do with it!”
But in his heart he knew that he might as well not have said this. And Mrs. Stedman knew it, too, and turned white with fear.
The boy ate a few hurried mouthfuls, and then went off to his work at the church. But he did not go with the old joy in his soul. Before this it had been the work of the Lord that he had been doing; but now he was only serving the Wygants—and the Hickmans—apparently one always served them, no matter where or how he worked in this world.
“You are late,” said old Mr. Jacobs, the sexton, when he arrived.
“Yes, sir,” said Samuel.
“Dr. Vince left word that he wanted to see you as soon as you came.”
The boy's heart gave a leap. Had the doctor by any chance repented? “Where is he?” he asked.
“In the vestry room,” said the other; and the boy went there.
The instant he entered, Dr. Vince sprang to his feet. “Samuel,” he cried vehemently, “this thing has got to stop!”
“What thing, Dr. Vince?”
“Your conduct is beyond endurance, boy—you are driving me to distraction!”
“What have I done now, sir?”
“My brother-in-law has just been here, making a terrible disturbance. You have been defaming him among the congregation of the church!”
“But, Dr. Vince!” cried Samuel, in amazement. “I have done nothing of the sort!”
“But you must have! Everyone is talking about it!”
“Doctor,” said the boy solemnly, “you are mistaken. I went to see Mr. Wygant, as I told you I would. Besides that, I have not spoken to a single soul about it, except just now to Sophie and Mrs. Stedman.—Oh, yes,” he added quickly—“and to Miss Gladys!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the other. “There you have it! Miss Gladys is a school friend of Mr. Hickman's daughter; and, of course, she went at once to tell her. And, of course, she will tell everyone else she knows—the whole congregation will be gossiping about it to-morrow!”
“I am very sorry, sir.”
“You see the trouble you cause me! And I must tell you plainly, Samuel, that this thing cannot go on another minute. Unless you are prepared to give up these absurd ideas of yours and attend to your duties as the sexton's boy, it will be necessary for you to leave the church.”
Samuel was staring at him aghast. “Leave the church!” he cried.
“Most assuredly!” declared the other.
“Dr. Vince!” exclaimed the other. “Do you mean that you would actually try to turn me out of the church?”
“I would, sir!”
“But, doctor, have you the right to do that?”
“The right? Why not?”
“You have the right to take away my work. But to turn me out of the church?”
“Samuel,” cried the distracted clergyman, “am I not the rector of this church?”
“But, doctor,” cried Samuel, “it is the church of God!”
There was a long pause.
Finally, Samuel took up the conversation again. “Tell me, Dr. Vince,” he said. “When Mr. Hickman came to see you, did he deny that he had committed that crime?”
“I did not ask him,” replied the other.
“You didn't ask him!” exclaimed the boy in dismay. “You didn't even care that much?”
Again there was a pause. “I asked Mr. Wygant,” said Samuel in a low voice. “And he confessed that he was guilty.”
“What!” cried the other.
“He confessed it—his whole conversation was a confession of it. He said everybody did those things, because that was the way to make money, and everybody wanted to make money. He called it competition. And then I asked him why he came to the church of Jesus, and he ordered me out of his house.”
Dr. Vince was listening with knitted brows. “And what do you propose to do now,” he asked.
“I don't know, sir. I suppose I shall have to expose him.”
“Samuel,” exclaimed the clergyman, “in all this wild behavior of yours, does it never occur to you that you owe some gratitude to me?”
“Oh, doctor!” cried the boy, clasping his hands in agony. “Don't say anything like that to me!”
“I do say it!” persisted the other. “I saved you and helped you; and now you are causing me most terrible suffering!”
“Doctor,” protested Samuel, “I would do anything in the world for you—I would die for you. But you ask me to be false to my duty; and how can I do that?”
“But does it never occur to you that older and wiser people may be better able to judge than you are?”
“But the facts are so plain, sir! And you have never answered me! You simply command me to be silent!”
The other did not reply.
“When I came to you,” went on Samuel, “you taught me about love and brotherhood—about self-sacrifice and service. And I took you at your word, sir. As God is my witness, I have done nothing but try to apply what you told me! I have tried to help the poor and oppressed. And how could I know that you did not really mean what you said?”
“Samuel,” protested the other, “you have no right to say that! I am doing all that I can. I preach upon these things very often.”
“Yes!” exclaimed the boy, “but what do you preach? Do you tell the truth to these rich people who come to your church? Do you say to them: 'You are robbing the poor. You are the cause of all the misery which exists in this town—you carry the guilt of it upon your souls. And you must cease from robbery and oppression—you must give up this wealth that you have taken from the people!' No—you don't say that—you know that you don't! And can't you see what that means, Dr. Vince—it means that the church is failing in its mission! And there will have to be a new church—somewhere, somehow! For these things exist! They are right here in our midst, and something must be done!”
And the boy sprang forward in his excitement, stretching out his arms. “The people are starving! Right here about us—here in Lockmanville! They are starving! starving! starving! Don't you understand, Dr. Vince? Starving!”
The doctor wrung his hands in his agitation. “Boy,” he exclaimed, “this thing cannot go on. I cannot stand it any longer!”
“But what am I to do, sir?”
“You are to submit yourself to my guidance. I ask you, once for all, Will you give up these wild courses of yours?”
“Dr. Vince,” cried Samuel, “I cannot! I cannot!”
“Then I tell you it will be necessary for us to part. You will give up your position, and you will leave the church.”
The tears started into Samuel's eyes. “Doctor,” he cried frantically, “don't cast me out! Don't! I beg you on my knees, sir!”
“I have spoken,” said the other, clenching his hands.
“But think what you are doing!” protested the boy. “You are casting out your own soul! You are turning your back upon the truth!”
“I tell you you must go!” exclaimed the doctor.
“But think of it! It means the end of the church. For don't you see—I shall have to fight you! I shall have to expose you! And I shall prevail over you, because I have the truth with me—because you have cast it out! Think what you are doing when you cast out the truth!”
“I will hear no more of this!” cried Dr. Vince wildly. “You are raving. I tell you to go! I tell you to go! Go now!”
And Samuel turned and went, sobbing meanwhile as if his heart would break.
Samuel rushed away into the darkness. But he couldn't stay away—he could not bring himself to believe that he was separated from St. Matthew's forever. He turned and came back to the church, and stood gazing at it, choking with his sobs.
Then, as he waited, he saw an automobile draw up in front of the side entrance, and saw Mr. Wygant step out and enter. The sight was like a blow in the face to him. There was the proud rich man, defiant and unpunished, seated in the place of authority; while Samuel, the Seeker, was turned out of the door!
A blaze of rebellion flamed up in him. No, no—they should not cast him off! He would fight them—he would fight to the very end. The church was not their church—it was the church of God! And he had a right to belong to it—and to speak the truth in it, too!
And so, just after the vestry had got settled to the consideration of the architect's sketch for the new Nurse's Home, there came a loud knock upon the door, and Samuel entered, wild-eyed and breathless.
“Gentlemen!” he cried. “I demand a hearing!”
Dr. Vince sprang to his feet in terror. “Samuel Prescott!” he exclaimed.
“I have been ordered out of the church!” proclaimed Samuel. “And I will not submit to it! I have spoken the truth, and I will not permit the evil-doers in St. Matthew's to silence me!”
Mr. Hickman had sprung up. “Boy,” he commanded, “leave this room!”
“I will not leave the room!” shouted Samuel. “I demand a hearing from the vestry of this church. I have a right to a hearing! I have spoken the truth, and nothing but the truth!”
“What is the boy talking about?” demanded another of the vestrymen. This was Mr. Hamerton, a young lawyer, whose pleasant face Samuel had often noticed. And Samuel, seeing curiosity and interest in his look, sprang toward him.
“Don't let them turn me out without a hearing!” he cried.
“Boy!” exclaimed Mr. Hickman, “I command you to leave this room.”
“You corrupted the city council!” shrilled Samuel. “You bribed it to beat the water bill! It's true, and you know it's true, and you don't dare to deny it!”
Mr. Hickman was purple in the face with rage. “It's a preposterous lie!” he roared.
“I have talked with one of the men who got the money!” cried Samuel. “There was two thousand dollars paid to ten of the supervisors.”
“Who is this man?” cried the other furiously.
“I won't tell his name,” said Samuel. “He told me in confidence.”
“Aha!” laughed the other. “I knew as much! It is a vile slander!”
“It is true!” protested Samuel. “Dr. Vince, you know that I am telling the truth. What reason would I have for making it up?”
“I have told you, Samuel,” exclaimed Dr. Vince, “that I would have nothing to do with this matter.”
“I will take any member of this vestry to talk with that man!” declared the boy. “Anybody can find out about these things if he wants to. Why, Mr. Wygant told me himself that he had paid money to Slattery to get franchises!”
And then Mr. Wygant came into the controversy. “WHAT!” he shouted.
“Why, of course you did!” cried Samuel in amazement. “Didn't you tell me this very afternoon?”
“I told you nothing of the sort!” declared the man.
“You told me everybody did it—that there was no way to help doing it. You called it the competition of capital!”
“I submit that this is an outrage!” exclaimed Mr. Hickman. “Leave this room, sir!”
“The poor people in this town are suffering and dying!” cried Samuel. “And they are being robbed and oppressed. And are these things to go on forever?”
“Samuel, this is no place to discuss the question!” broke in Dr. Vince.
“But why not, sir? The guilty men are high in the councils of this church. They hold the church up to disgrace before all the world. And this is the church of Christ, sir!”
“But yours is not the way to go about it, boy!” exclaimed Mr. Hamerton—who was alarmed because Samuel kept looking at him.
“Why not?” cried Samuel. “Did not Christ drive out the money-changers from the temple with whips?”
This was an uncomfortable saying. There was a pause after it, as if everyone were willing to let his neighbor speak first.
“Are we not taught to follow Christ's example, Dr. Vince?” asked the boy.
“Hardly in that sense, Samuel,” said the terrified doctor. “Christ was God. And we can hardly be expected—”
“Ah, that is a subterfuge!” broke in Samuel, passionately. “You say that Christ was God, and so you excuse yourself from doing what He tells you to! But I don't believe that He was God in any such sense as that. He was a man, like you and me! He was a poor man, who suffered and starved! And the rich men of His time despised Him and spit upon Him and crucified Him!”
Here a new member of the vestry entered the arena. This was the venerable Mr. Curtis, who looked like a statue of the Olympian Jove. “Boy,” he said sternly, “you object to being put out of the church—and yet you confess to being an infidel.”
“I may be an infidel, Mr. Curtis,” replied the other, quickly; “but I never paid two hundred dollars to Slattery so that the police would let me block the sidewalks of the town.”
And Mr. Curtis subsided and took no further part in the discussion.
“The church cast out Jesus!” went on Samuel, taking advantage of the confusion. “And it was the rich and powerful in the church who did it. And he used about them language far more violent than I have ever used. 'Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!' he said. 'Woe unto you also, you lawyers!—Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' And if He were here tonight He would be on my side—and the rich evil-doers who sit on this board would cast Him out again! You have cast Him out already! You have shut your ears to the cry of the oppressed—you make mockery of justice and truth! You are crucifying Him again every day!”
“This is outrageous!” cried Mr. Hickman. “It is blasphemy!”
“It must stop instantly,” put in Mr. Wygant. And Samuel knew that when Mr. Wygant spoke, he meant to be obeyed.
“Then there is no one here who will hear me?” he exclaimed. “Mr. Hamerton, won't you help me?”
“What do you want us to do?” demanded Mr. Hamerton.
“I want the vestry to investigate these charges. I want you to find out whether it is true that members of St. Matthew's have been corrupting the government of Lockmanville. And if it is true, I want you to drive such men from the church! They have no place in the church, sir! Men who spend their whole time in trying to get the people's money from them! Men who openly declare, as Mr. Wygant did to me, that it is necessary to bribe lawmakers in order to make money! Such men degrade the church and drag it from its mission. They are the enemies the church exists to fight—”
“Are we here to listen to a sermon from this boy?” shouted Mr. Hickman furiously.
“Samuel, leave this room!” commanded Dr. Vince.
“Then there is no one here who will help me?”
“I told you you could accomplish nothing by such behavior. Leave the room!”
“Very well, then,” cried the boy wildly, “I will go. But I tell you I will not give up without a fight. I will expose you and denounce you to the world! The people shall know you for what you are—cowards and hypocrites, faithless to your trust! Plunderers of the public! Corrupters of the state!”
“Get out of here, you young villain!” shouted Hickman, advancing with a menace.
And the boy, blazing with fury, pointed his finger straight into his face. “You, Henry Hickman!” he cried. “You are the worst of them all! You, the great lawyer—the eminent statesman! I have been among the lowest—I have been with saloon keepers and criminals—with publicans and harlots and thieves—but never yet have I met a man as merciless and as hard as you! You a Christian—you might be the Roman soldier who spat in Jesus' face!”
And with that last thunderbolt Samuel turned and went out, slamming the door with a terrific bang in the great lawyer's face.
For at least a couple of hours Samuel paced the streets of Lockmanville, to let his rage and grief subside. And then he went home, and to his astonishment found that Sophie Stedman had been waiting up for him all this while.
She listened breathlessly to the story of his evening's adventures. Then she said, “I have been trying to do something, too.”
“What have you done?” he asked.
“I went to see little Ethel,” she replied.
“Ethel Vince!” he gasped.
“Yes,” said she. “She is your friend, you know; and I went to ask her not to let her father turn you off.”
“And what came of it?”
“She cried,” said Sophie. “She was terribly unhappy. She said that she knew that you were a good boy; and that she would never rest until her father had taken you back.”
“You don't mean it!” cried Samuel in amazement.
“Yes, Samuel; but then her mother came.”
“Oh! And what then?”
“She scolded me! She was very angry with me. She said I had no right to fill the child's mind with falsehoods about her uncle. And she wouldn't listen to me—she turned me out of the house.”
There was a long silence. “I don't think I did any good at all,” said Sophie in a low voice. “We are going to have to do it all by ourselves.”
Samuel slept not a wink all that night. First he lay wrestling with the congregation. And then his thoughts came to Miss Gladys, and what he was going to say to her. This kindled a fire in his blood, and when the first streaks of dawn were in the sky, he rose and went out to walk.
Throughout all these adventures, his feelings had been mingled with the excitement of his love for her. Samuel hardly knew what to make of himself. He had never kissed a woman in his life before—but now desire was awake, and from the deeps of him the most unexpected emotions came surging, sweeping him away. He was a prey to longings and terrors. Wild ecstasies came to him, and then followed plunges into melancholy. He longed to see her, and other things stood in the way, and he did not know why he should be so tormented.
Just to be in love would have been enough. But to have been given the love of a being like Miss Gladys—peerless and unapproachable, almost unimaginable!
After hours of pacing the streets, he called to see her. And she came to him, her face alight with eager curiosity, and crying, “Tell me all about it!”
She listened, almost dumb with amazement. “And you said that to my father!” she exclaimed again and again. “And to Mr. Hickman! And to old Mr. Curtis! Samuel! Samuel!”
“It was all true, Miss Gladys,” he insisted.
“Yes,” she said—“but—to say it to them!”
“They turned me out of the church,” he went on. “Had they a right to do that?”
“I don't know,” she answered. “Oh, my, what a time there will be!”
“And what are you going to do now?” she asked after a pause.
“I don't know. I wanted to talk about it with you.”
“But what do you think of doing?”
“I must expose them to the people.”
Miss Gladys looked at him quickly. “Oh, no, Samuel,” she said—“you mustn't do that!”
“Why not, Miss Gladys?”
“Because—it wouldn't do.”
“But Miss Gladys—”
“It wouldn't be decent, Samuel. And it's so much more effective to talk with people privately, as you have been doing.”
“But who else is there to talk to?”
“Why, I don't know. We'll have to think.”
“It's your father and Mr. Hickman I have to deal with, Miss Gladys. And they won't listen to me any more!”
“Perhaps not. But, then, see how much you have done already!”
“What have I done?”
“Think how ashamed you have made them!”
“But what difference does that make, Miss Gladys? Don't you see they've still got the money they've taken?”
There was a pause. “This is something I have been thinking,” said Samuel gravely. “I've had this great burden laid upon me, and I must carry it. I have to see the thing through to the end. And I'm afraid it will be painful to you. You may feel that you can't possibly marry me.”
At these words Miss Gladys gave a wild start. She stared at him in consternation. “Marry you!” she gasped.
“Yes,” he said; and then, seeing the look upon her face, he stopped.
“Marry you!” she panted again.
A silence followed, while they gazed at each other.
“Why, Samuel!” she exclaimed.
“Miss Gladys,” he said in a low voice, “you told me that you loved me.”
“Yes,” she said, “but surely—” And then suddenly she bit her lips together exclaiming, “This has gone too far!”
“Miss Gladys!” he cried.
“Samuel,” she said, “we have been two bad children; and we must not go on in this way.”
The boy gave a gasp of amazement.
“I had no idea that you were taking me so seriously,” she continued. “It wasn't fair to me.”
“Then—then you don't love me!” he panted.
“Why—perhaps,” she replied, “how can I tell? But one does not marry because one loves, Samuel.”
He gazed at her, speechless.
“I thought we were playing with each other; and I thought you understood it. It wasn't very wise, perhaps—-”
“Playing with each other!” whispered the boy, his voice almost gone.
“You take everything with such frightful seriousness,” she protested. “Really, I don't think you had any right—-”
“Miss Gladys!” he cried in sudden anguish; and she stopped and stared at him, frightened.
“Do you know what you have done to me?” he exclaimed.
“Samuel,” she said in a trembling voice, “I am very much surprised and upset. I had no idea of such a thing; and you must stop, before it is too late.”
“But I love you!” he cried, half beside himself.
“Yes,” she said in great agitation—“and that's very good of you. But there are some things you must remember—”
“You—you let me embrace you, Miss Gladys! You let me think of you so! Why, what is a man to do? What was I to make of it? I had never loved a woman before. And you—you led me on—”
“Samuel, you must not talk like this!” she broke in. “I can't listen to you. It was a misunderstanding, and you must forget it all. You must go away. We must not meet again.”
“Miss Gladys!” he cried in horror.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “you must go—”
“You are going to turn me off!” he panted. “Oh, how can you say such a thing? Why, think what you have done to me!”
“Samuel,” protested the girl angrily, “this is perfectly preposterous behavior of you! You have no right to go on in this way. You never had any right to—to think such things. How could you so forget your place?”
And he started as if stung with a whip. “My place!” he gasped.
“Yes,” she said.
“I see, I see!” he burst out. “It's my 'place' again. It's the fact that I have no money!”
“Why, Samuel!” she exclaimed. “What a thing to say! It's not that—”
“It's that, and it's nothing but that! It never is anything but that! It's because I am a poor boy, and couldn't help myself! You told me that you loved me, and I believed you. You were so beautiful, and I thought that you must be good! Why, I worshiped the very ground you walked on. I would have done anything in the world for you—I would have died for you! I went about thinking about you all day—I made you into a dream of everything that was good and perfect! And now—now—you say that you were only playing with me! Using me for your selfish pleasure—just as you do all the other poor people!”
“Samuel!” she gasped.
“Just as your father does the children in his mill! Just as your cousin does the poor girls he seduces! Just as you do everything in life that you touch!”
The girl had turned scarlet with anger. “How dare you speak to me that way?” she cried.
“I dare to speak the truth to anyone! And that is the truth about you! You are like all the rest of them—the members of your class. You are parasites—vampires—you devour other people's lives! And you are the worst, because you are a woman! You are beautiful, and you ought to be all the things that I imagined you were! But you use your beauty for a snare—you wreck men's lives with it—”
“Stop, Samuel!”
“I won't stop! You shall hear me! You drew me on deliberately—you wanted to amuse yourself with me, to see what I would do. And you had never a thought about me, or my rights, or the harm you might be doing to me! And now you've got tired—and you tell me to end it! You tell me about my 'place!' What am I in the world for, but to afford you amusement? What are all the working people for but to save you trouble and keep you beautiful and happy? What are the children for but to spin clothes for you to wear? And you—what do you do for them, to pay for their wasted lives, for all their toil and suffering?”
“Samuel Prescott!” cried the outraged girl. “I will not hear another word of this!”
“Yes, that's just what your father said! And what your cousin said! And what your clergyman said! And you can send for the butler and have me put out—but let me tell you that will not be the end of it. We shall find some way to get at you! The people will not always be your slaves—they will not always give their lives to keep you in idleness and luxury! You were born to it—you've had everything in the world that you wanted, from the first hour of your life. And you think that will go on forever, that nothing can ever change it! But let me tell you that it seems different to the people underneath! We are tired of being robbed and spit upon! And we mean to fight! We mean to fight! We don't intend to be starved and tormented forever!”
And then in the midst of his wild tirade, Samuel stopped, and stared with horror in his eyes—realizing that this was Miss Gladys to whom he was talking! And suddenly a storm of sobs rose in him; and he put his hands to his face, and burst into tears, and turned and rushed from the room.
He went down the street, like a hunted animal, beside himself with grief, and looking for some place to hide. And as he ran on, he pulled out the faded pictures he had carried next to his heart, and tore them into pieces and flung them to the winds.
When Sophie came home that evening, Samuel had mastered himself. He told her the story without a tremor in his voice. And this was well, for he was not prepared for the paroxysm of emotion with which the child received the news. Miss Gladys had been the last of Samuel's illusions; but she was the only one that Sophie had ever had. The child had made her life all over out of the joy of working for her; and now, hearing the story of her treatment of Samuel, she was almost beside herself with grief.
Samuel was frightened at her violence. “Listen, Sophie,” he said, putting his arm around her. “We must not forget our duty.”
“I could never go back there again!” exclaimed the child wildly. “I should die if I had to see her again!”
“I don't mean that,” said the other quickly—seeking to divert her thoughts. “But you must remember what I have to do; and you must help me.”
He went on to tell her of his plan to fight for the possession of St. Matthew's Church. “And we must not give way to bitterness,” he said; “it would be a very wicked thing if we did it from anger.”
“But how can you help it?” she cried.
“It is hard,” said Samuel; “but I have been wrestling with myself. We must not hate these people. They have done evil to us, but they do not realize it—they are poor human beings like the rest of us.”
“But they are bad, selfish people!” exclaimed the child.
“I have thought it all out,” said he. “I have been walking the streets all day, thinking about it. And I will not let myself feel anything but pity for them. They have done me wrong, but it is nothing to the wrong they have done themselves.”
“Oh, Samuel, you are so good!” exclaimed Sophie; and he winced—because that was what Miss Gladys had said to him.
“I had to settle it with myself,” he explained. “I have got to carry on a fight against them, and I have to be sure that I'm not just venting my spite.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Sophie.
“I am going to put the facts before the congregation of the church. If they will do nothing, I am going to the people.”
“But how, Samuel?”
“I am going to call a meeting. See, I have written this.”
And he took from his pocket a piece of paper, on which he had printed, in capital letters, as follows:
“There is corruption in the church. Members of its vestry have bribed the government of the town. They are robbing the people. The vestry has refused me a hearing and turned me out of the church. I appeal to the congregation. Next Wednesday evening, at eight o'clock, I will address a meeting on the vacant lot opposite the church, and will tell what I know. SAMUEL PRESCOTT.”
“And what are you going to do with that?” asked Sophie in wonder.
“I am going to have it printed on little slips, and give them out to the people when they are coming out of the church to-morrow morning.”
“Oh, Samuel!” gasped the child.
“I have to do it,” he said.
“But, Samuel, everyone will come—people from all over town.”
“I can't help that,” he answered. “I can't afford to hire a hall; and they wouldn't let me speak in the church.”
“But can you get this printed so quickly?”
“I don't know,” said he. “I must find some one.”
Sophie clapped her hands suddenly. “Oh, I know just the very thing!” she cried. “Friedrich Bremer has a printing press!”
“What!”
“Yes. His father used to print things. They will tell us.” And so, without stopping to eat, the two hurried off to the Bremer family; and mother and father and all the children sat and listened in astonishment while Samuel told his tale. Friedrich was thrilling with excitement; and old Johann's red face grew fiery.
“Herr Gott!” he cried. “I vas that vay myself once!”
“And then will you help me to get them printed?” asked Samuel.
“Sure!” replied the other. “I will do it myself. Vy did I go through the Commune?” And so the whole family adjourned to the attic, and the little printing outfit was dragged out from under the piles of rubbish.
“I used it myself,” said the old carpet designer. “But vhen I come here they give me a varning, and I haf not dared. For two years I haf not even been to the meetings of the local.”
“Of the what?” asked Samuel.
“I am a Socialist,” explained Mr. Bremer. And Samuel gave a start. Ought he to accept any help from Socialists? But meantime Friedrich was sorting out the type, and his father was inspecting Samuel's copy.
“You must make it vith a plenty of paragraphs,” he said; “and exclamation points, too. Then they vill read it.”
“They'll read it!” said Friedrich grimly.
“How shall we print it?” asked the father; and the children rushed downstairs and came back with some sheets of writing paper, and a lot of brown wrapping paper. They sat on the floor and folded and cut it, while Friedrich set the type. And this was the way of the printing of Samuel's first manifesto.
“Can you make a speech?” Mrs. Bremer asked. “Won't you be frightened?”
To which Samuel answered gravely: “I don't think so. I shall be thinking about what I have to say.”
It was late at night when the two children went home, with three hundred copies of the revolutionary document carefully wrapped up from view; and they were so much excited by the whole affair that they had actually forgotten about Miss Gladys! It was not until he tried to go to sleep that her image came back to him, and all his blasted hopes arose to mock at him. What a fool he had been! How utterly insane all his fantasies seemed to him now! So he passed another sleepless night, and it was not till daylight that he fell into a troubled slumber.
He had to control his impatience until after eleven o'clock, the hour of the service at the church. Sophie wished to go with him and share his peril, but he would not consent to this. He would not be able to give the manifesto to everyone, but he could reach enough—the others would hear about it! So, a full hour before the end of the service, he took up his post across the street, his heart beating furiously. He was feeling, it must be confessed, a good deal like a dynamiter or an assassin. The weather was warm, and the door of the church was open, so that he could hear the booming voice of Dr. Vince. The sound of the organ brought tears into his eyes—he loved the organ, and he was not to be allowed to listen to it! At last came the end; the sounds of the choir receded, and the assassin moved over to a strategic position. And then came the first of the congregation—of all persons, the Olympian Mr. Curtis!
“Will you take one of these, sir?” said Samuel, with his heart in his throat. And Mr. Curtis who was mopping his forehead with his handkerchief, started as if he had seen a ghost. “Boy, what are you doing?” he cried; but Samuel had darted away, trying to give out the slips of paper to the people as they came out at both doors. He was quite right in saying that everybody would know about it. The people took the slips and read them, and then they stopped to stare and exclaim to one another, so that there was a regular blockade at the doors of the church. By the time that a score of the slips had been given out the members had had time to get their wits back, and then there was an attempt to interfere.
“This is an outrage!” cried Mr. Curtis, and tried to grab Samuel by the arm; but the boy wrenched himself loose and darted around the corner, to where a stream of people had come out of the side door.
“Take one!” he exclaimed. “Pass it along! Let everyone know!” And so he got rid of a score or two more of his slips. And then, keeping a wary lookout for Mr. Curtis or any other of the vestrymen, he ran around in front again, and circled on the edge of the rapidly gathering throng, giving away several of the dodgers wherever a hand was held out. “Give them to everyone!” he kept repeating in his shrill voice.
“The evil-doers must be turned out of the church!”
Then suddenly out of the crowd pushed Mr. Hamerton, breathless and red in the face. “Samuel!” he cried, pouncing upon him, “this cannot go on!”
“But it must go on!” replied the boy. “Let me go! Take your hands off me!” And he raised his voice in a wild shriek. “There are thieves in the church of Christ!”
In the scuffle the dodgers were scattered on the ground; and Mr. Hamerton stooped to pick them up. Samuel seized what he could and darted to the side door again, where there were more people eager to take them. And so he got rid of the last he had. And for the benefit of those whom he still saw emerging, he raised his hands and shouted: “There are men in the vestry of this church who have bribed the city council of Lockmanville! I mean to expose them in a meeting across the street on Wednesday night!” And then he turned, and dodging an outraged church member who sought to lay hold of him, he sped like a deer down the street.
He had made his appeal to the congregation!