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