“That compromise was the direct cause of to-morrow!” the young clergyman went on in his passionate remorse. “That compromise was the beginning of my fall. After the prominent members took me up, favoured me, it became easy to blink my eyes at their business methods. And then it became easy for me to convince myself that it would be all right for me to gamble in stocks.”
“That was your great mistake,” said the dry voice of the motionless figure against the tree. “A minister has no business to fool with the stock market.”
“But what was I to do?” Doctor Sherman cried desperately. “No money behind me—the salary of a dry goods clerk—my wife up there, whom I love better than my own life, needing delicacies, attention, a long stay in Colorado—what other chance, I ask you, did I have of getting the money?”
“Well, at any rate, you should have kept your fingers off that church building fund.”
“God, don’t I realize that! But with the market falling, and all the little I had about to be swept away, what else was a half frantic man to do but to try to save himself with any money he could put his hands upon?”
Blake shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, if luck was against you when that church money was also swept away, luck was certainly with you when it happened that I was the one to discover what you had done.”
“So I thought, when you offered to replace the money and cover the whole thing up. But, God, I never dreamed you’d exact such a price in return!”
He gripped Blake’s arm and shook it. His voice was a half-muffled shriek.
“If you wanted the water-works, if you wanted to do this to Doctor West, why did you pick on me to bring the accusation? There are men who would never have minded it—men without conscience and without character!”