The unhallowed harvest

The Unhallowed Harvest
By HOMER GREENE Author of “The Lincoln Conscript,” “Pickett’s Gap,” etc.
PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1917, by George W. Jacobs & Company
Published March, 1917
All rights reserved
Printed in U. S. A.

The Unhallowed Harvest
The Reverend Robert Bruce Farrar entered the Common Pleas court-room and made his way down the center aisle to the railing that enclosed the space allotted to members of the bar. Had he been an ordinary citizen he would have stopped there. But he was not an ordinary citizen. Therefore he passed on into the railed enclosure to find his seat. He was rector of Christ Church; the oldest, wealthiest and most prominent religious organization in the city. Yet that fact alone would not have given him the distinction he enjoyed in this community. He was also an eloquent preacher, a profound scholar, a man of attractive and vigorous personality. Apparently he was not lacking in any of the qualities that make for success in the administration of the affairs of a large city parish. He had been rector of Christ Church for two years, and his worth and ability had been, during that time, abundantly proven. Moreover, by reason of his genial and sympathetic nature, he had endeared himself to the people of the parish, especially to the more humble members of his flock. He had, as the saying is, “a passion for humanity.” To those who toiled, who were in trouble or affliction, his heart went out in unaffected sympathy. He gave of his best to encourage, comfort and relieve them. Indeed, the only criticism made concerning him—and that was a suggestion rather than a criticism—was that possibly he neglected the souls of the rich to care for the bodies of the poor. He was deeply interested in problems of social ethics and economy, in fact in all problems having to do with the general welfare. He was a student of human character in all of its phases and manifestations. This it was, doubtless, that led him into becoming a frequenter of the courts. It was for this reason that the trial of causes had for him a strong and unfailing attraction. He was fond of looking on at the visible working of the machinery of the law. For there are few public places where human motives, as disclosed by human conduct, are brought more frequently and startlingly to the surface than in the court-room. It was a place, therefore, where the reverend gentleman was not only a frequent, but also a welcome visitor. He had a standing invitation to enter the bar enclosure, and to occupy a chair among his friends the lawyers. There had been occasions, indeed, occasions of great public interest, when the presiding judge, who chanced to be his senior warden, had had his rector up to sit beside him on the bench. But the case on trial this day was not an unusual one. It had attracted no particular attention, either among lawyers or laymen. Yet the rector of Christ Church was deeply interested in it. He had attended, so far as he had been able to do so, the sessions of the court in which it was being heard. It was what is known among lawyers as a negligence case. A workman, employed by a large manufacturing concern, had been seriously and permanently injured while engaged in the performance of the duties of his employment. An elevator on which he was riding, while making his way from one part of the factory to another, had suddenly gone wrong, and had plunged down through five stories, to become a heap of wreckage at the bottom of the shaft. And out from among the mass of splintered wood and broken and twisted iron and steel, he had been drawn, scarcely less broken and twisted and crushed than the inanimate things among which he had lain. An action had been brought, in his name, against the employing company, to compel it to compensate him for his injuries. This was the second day of the trial. It was late in the afternoon, and the case was drawing to a close. When the rector of Christ Church entered the court-room, Philip Westgate, for the defense, was making his closing argument to the jury. With relentless logic he was tearing down the structure which the experienced and skillful attorney for the plaintiff had built up. Although one of the younger members of a brilliant bar, it was freely predicted that the day was not far distant when he would be its leader. This thought lay distinctly in the mind of Richard Malleson, president of the defendant company, as he sat at the counsel’s table, and followed, with keen interest and satisfaction, the course of the argument.