slandering, harlotry, drunkenness, and a few other such minor wickednesses, before you tackle the bigger job of getting rid of a quiet, clean-souled fellow, just because he worships God differently than you do. Perhaps you might hit me pretty hard along some of these lines, but you won't make much headway when you tackle me on Henri. And now, if you hain't got anything more to say," and his tone was ominous of coming wrath, “perhaps you 'll take yourself off my farm, or I may take a notion to help you."

“You 'll get rid of that fellow," answered the clergyman, pointing toward Henri, "or I'll lay the matter before the brethren. I have been negligent, hoping that you might turn from the evil of your ways. I have let you remain in the church, though cut off from the communion. It has been weakness in the past. Now it must be as the brethren say."

"And tell the brethren from me, while you are about it, that they can go to hell, where most of 'em belong."

CHAPTER XXXV

IT

BABYLON THE GREAT

T WAS long since a sermon of such power had oeen preached in Padanaram pulpit as that which Simeon Craig preached the next Sabbath day morning from the text:

And upon her forehead was a name written Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abomination of the Earth.

And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

He sketched rapidly, in homely language whose only ornament was the Biblical figures which were well nigh as much his own as his mother tongue, the long line of crimes with which the Roman Church stands charged at the bar of Protestant Christianity. The Israelitish bowing of the knee to Baal was the parallel of the image worship of the recreant church. Its forms and ceremonies, the magnificence of its churches and its priests could be alone meant by the words, "the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." She was Rome, for does not St. John himself declare, "and the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications."

Then came the long list of martyrs to the faith that had marked the Protestant Reformation. Luther's charges were rehearsed: the Inquisition was painted in

all its horrors, and Bloody Mary was dragged from her tomb in evidence that "the woman is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus."

"Babylon the great is fallen," he cried, leaning from his pulpit toward the spell-bound congregation. “Babylong the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth!"

The very audacity of this as a preliminary to the declaration that the emissaries of the Scarlet Woman had stolen into their quiet community, saved that declaration from the weakness of absurdity to lift it to the importance of the great theme itself; and when he made it, his audience shuddered with horror in which there was no pretence, but rather the intense realisation of the imagery of evil he had been painting. So, too, when he again turned to the Bible imagery, no one doubted its ordained application to that actual moment.

Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins!

For her sins have reached unto heaven and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

Rejoice over her, thou heaven: and ye holy apostles and prophets: for God hath avenged you on her!

There followed a silence during which even the breathing of the congregation seemed to cease, and then he leaned again toward them, with the final outcry:

Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones and pearls!

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her according to her works.

Thus with violence shall that great city be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all!

After the preaching, there was a church meeting when he laid before the brethren the fact that Joseph Ashgrave was harbouring a Papist and that he had himself attended mass at Belmont. This was the sin of which he accused him, not his profanity, his drunkenness, his unchastity. Into this God-fearing Protestant community he had brought the child of another communion, knowingly placing in jeopardy the inheritance of faith which was theirs from England and the Reformation, and later from the Puritan movement, which in its greatness produced the Commonwealth and Cromwell, and in its littleness Salem and New England.

Peleg Singleton was for a church trial. It would bring people to the village and grist to his mill, and he waxed strong on the right of a man to be heard in his own behalf. "It's agin the principles of a free country fur eny man to be condemned unheerd," he asserted.

"Farm work's pressin'," Deacon Buffington objected, "an' we hain't got no time to waste. 'T ain't goin' to alter fac's to hear him talk, even ef he tuck the trouble to come, which I hain't guessin' he would. I don't see no need to take a week to weed a field when you kin do it in fifteen minutes."

Singleton opined that "so'thin' is due to the constitutional right o' harcus carcus," and, incidentally, to the interests of home trade as represented by his shop.

"I don't know nothin' erbout his carkis," retorted the deacon, "but ef 't ain't wuth no more 'n I guess it be, thar hain't no great shucks of a constitutional right consarned with it. I move the name of Joseph Ash

grave be stricken off an' eradicated from the books o' this church forthwith and immediately, an' thet his church membership thereupon cease an' determine an' therea'ter stop."

"Lordy-massy," interposed Blanket, breaking through a cloud of admiring wonderers, "du you s'pose we kin du all thet, an' du it jest by sayin' yes? It's kinder cu'rus the things thet kin be done by jest votin'."

"You hear the motion," said the clergyman, with solemnity intended to hint his disapproval of Blanket's half-suspected levity. "Is the motion seconded?"

"Wall, I'll second it," Blanket declared, utterly oblivious to the implied rebuke. “It kinder seems like a big proposition, an' I do'no but somebody ought tu help bear the heft on 't. P'haps you 'll have somebody third it; I hain't hankerin' to carry half on't."

"It is moved and seconded that the name of Joseph Ashgrave be stricken from the church rolls for fostering and harbouring and abetting Papists, to the injury of the Church. Are you ready for the question?"

"I s'pose," said Blanket, "thet was the motion. P'raps I'm gettin' a little hard o' hearin'."

"If the brother desires to speak on the question," said Craig sternly, "we shall be glad to hear him, but I cannot permit this constant interruption of orderly proceedings."

"Do you call this ord❜ly proceedin's," demanded Singleton, who saw his hope of a bargain day fading away, "tu turn a feller out without givin' him a chance tu say nothin'? Nex' thing you know somebody '11 want tu be hangin' a man fust an' tryin' him a’terward. What's become of the paladin of our liberties, I'd like tu know?"

Seagrave rose. He was interesting as the father