His breast warmed comfortably with the sense of duty done, the clergyman made his way toward the water front, congratulating himself that he would get the six o'clock boat and be at home in time for dinner; but as he walked through the ferry building, his eye was caught by a headline in one of the evening papers. "MINISTER TO BE ARRESTED" it proclaimed in tall characters of glaring black; and he reflected cynically at the eagerness with which the headline makers seize upon that word "minister" or any of its synonyms. It made the black letters blacker when they spelled minister, priest, or clergyman.
Wondering what preacher could have got himself in trouble, and feeling a slight sense of resentment at the creature, whoever he might be, to have thus brought notoriety and possible dishonor upon the calling, Doctor Hampstead bought a copy of the paper from fat Hermann of the crutch and red face, who has stood so many years at the ferry gate; but reading no farther than the headline, he doubled the paper in his hand and elbowed his way through the crowd to a seat on the exposed upper deck of the ferryboat. Wearied from the exertions of his day, the minister found temporary diversion in watching the fountains of humanity gushing up the stairways. Many of the people he knew, and those who saw him nodded as they passed. Once or twice it struck him that there was something peculiar in these glances of recognition, a startled look of surprise or wonder that he could not quite understand. Occasionally the bold look of a man he did not know but who apparently recognized him had in it a quality of cynicism or of gloating.
With a disagreeable feeling of embarrassment which he did not undertake to explain, the minister turned away from the crowd and fell to watching the sweep of bay and the plowing craft upon it. The fresh salt breeze was very grateful to his face and lungs after the noisome alleys through which his mission had taken him. The water this evening was amethyst blue, and under the prows of the passing boats broke into foam of marble whiteness. The sky above was a pure turquoise, except towards the west, where the descending sun kindled a conflagration of glory in the low-lying clouds. All this wealth of refreshing color and the tonic in the stiffening breeze made the world not only seem fresh and pure, but full of power; as if to give assurance that the ocean and the coming night were big enough and strong enough to swallow all the unpleasantness and all the weakness and wickedness of men, and send the sun up to-morrow morning upon a new day that was fresh and pristine, like the day of creation itself.
Hampstead remembered his prayer of the morning that this particular day might be a great one, and felt a trifle disappointed. In a kind of a way it had been big. Rollie Burbeck had come to him, broken and cowering. He had helped him; he believed he had saved him. Surely, for the time being, he had saved that gifted mother of his from the awful shock of knowing that her son was a defaulter and a thief. True, he had plunged heavily in rescuing that boy; yet the money came from people who believed in Hampstead sufficiently to give him of their surplus wealth for just such ventures. If the effort failed, they would regret the loss of the man more than the loss of the money.
Yet the minister really believed that Rollie was going to take the "way up", and assuring himself once more of this, fell to wondering how Miss Dounay received the penitent when he brought back the diamonds, and whether she had acted generously or spitefully. Speculating next whether the story of the return of the diamonds had been given to the newspapers yet, and anxious to know how they had handled it, if it had, Hampstead bethought him of the paper in his hand and unfolded it for inspection.
But the make-up of the front page forced his attention back upon the matter of the minister who was to be arrested. The sub-head startled him, for it contained his own name, while the opening sentence revealed that it was himself who was to be arrested, and that the occasion of the arrest was the charge that he had stolen the Dounay diamonds.
At the first impact of this astounding piece of news, an exclamation of amazement broke from the minister's lips; but immediately his teeth were set hard as his eye dived down the column, lapping up the words of the story by sentences and almost by paragraphs.
Miss Dounay, it appeared, had gone to the office of District Attorney Miller at three o'clock that afternoon by appointment, and had there sworn to a complaint, charging him, the Reverend John Hampstead, with the theft of her diamond necklace, valued at twenty-two thousand dollars. There were a few lines of an interview with District Attorney Miller, in which that official stated that at first he had not regarded Miss Dounay's charges seriously, but that the actress was so emphatic in her demand for the warrant of arrest that he had not felt himself justified in refusing it. At the same time, the District Attorney expressed his personal belief in the innocence of the minister.
An attempt to serve the warrant immediately, the story said, had been frustrated by the temporary absence of the Reverend Hampstead in San Francisco upon one of his accustomed missions of mercy.
The article concluded with the statement that while it was generally known that Doctor Hampstead was one of Miss Dounay's guests on the night before, the report that he had been charged with the theft of the diamonds was everywhere received with a smile, and there was some harsh criticism of the District Attorney for issuing a complaint, the only effect of which must be to gratify the enemies of the clergyman, and to lessen his influence, thus hampering him in the good work he was doing in the community. This would be all to no purpose, since even a preliminary hearing must be sufficient to show that there was no evidence against him, and that the complaint itself was due to the extravagant suspicion of a highly nervous woman, laboring under great emotional strain.