Audrey

On went the word picture that showed how vice could flaunt it in so fallen

an age. The preacher spared not plain words, squarely turned himself

toward the gallery, pointed out with voice and hand the object of his

censure and of God's wrath. Had the law pilloried the girl before them

all, it had been but little worse for her. She sat like a statue, staring

with wide eyes at the window above the altar. This, then, was what the

words in the coach last night had meant--this was what the princess

thought--this was what his world thought-There arose a commotion in the ranks of the clergy of Virginia. The

Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his brethren,

came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his stand in the pew

beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom during many years

he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and whom he had latterly

made his tool, "Never mind him, Audrey, my girl," he said, and put an

unsteady hand upon her shoulder. "You're a good child; they cannot harm

ye."

He turned his great shambling body and heavy face toward the preacher,

stemmed in the full tide of his eloquence by this unseemly interruption,

"Ye beggarly Scot!" he exclaimed thickly. "Ye evil-thinking saint from

Salem way, that know the very lining of the Lord's mind, and yet, walking

through his earth, see but a poisonous weed in his every harmless flower!

Shame on you to beat down the flower that never did you harm! The girl's

as innocent a thing as lives! Ay, I've had my dram,--the more shame to you

that are justly rebuked out of the mouth of a drunken man! I have done,

Mr. Commissary," addressing himself to that dignitary, who had advanced to

the altar rail with his arm raised in a command for silence. "I've no

child of my own, thank God! but the maid has grown up in my house, and

I'll not sit to hear her belied. I've heard of last night; 'twas the mad

whim of a sick man. The girl's as guiltless of wrong as any lady here. I,

Gideon Darden, vouch for it!"

He sat heavily down beside Audrey, who never stirred from her still regard

of that high window. There was a moment of portentous silence; then, "Let

us pray," said the minister from the pulpit.

Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray. And when it was all

over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself without

the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear autumnal

skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a new world

into which she had stepped. She could not have said that she found it

fair. Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all the

congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager to reach

the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile and scandalous

interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr. Marmaduke Haward

might have said or done had he been present.