“How shall we print it?” asked the father; and the children rushed downstairs and came back with some sheets of writing paper, and a lot of brown wrapping paper. They sat on the floor and folded and cut it, while Friedrich set the type. And this was the way of the printing of Samuel's first manifesto.
“Can you make a speech?” Mrs. Bremer asked. “Won't you be frightened?”
To which Samuel answered gravely: “I don't think so. I shall be thinking about what I have to say.”
It was late at night when the two children went home, with three hundred copies of the revolutionary document carefully wrapped up from view; and they were so much excited by the whole affair that they had actually forgotten about Miss Gladys! It was not until he tried to go to sleep that her image came back to him, and all his blasted hopes arose to mock at him. What a fool he had been! How utterly insane all his fantasies seemed to him now! So he passed another sleepless night, and it was not till daylight that he fell into a troubled slumber.
He had to control his impatience until after eleven o'clock, the hour of the service at the church. Sophie wished to go with him and share his peril, but he would not consent to this. He would not be able to give the manifesto to everyone, but he could reach enough—the others would hear about it! So, a full hour before the end of the service, he took up his post across the street, his heart beating furiously. He was feeling, it must be confessed, a good deal like a dynamiter or an assassin. The weather was warm, and the door of the church was open, so that he could hear the booming voice of Dr. Vince. The sound of the organ brought tears into his eyes—he loved the organ, and he was not to be allowed to listen to it! At last came the end; the sounds of the choir receded, and the assassin moved over to a strategic position. And then came the first of the congregation—of all persons, the Olympian Mr. Curtis!
“Will you take one of these, sir?” said Samuel, with his heart in his throat. And Mr. Curtis who was mopping his forehead with his handkerchief, started as if he had seen a ghost. “Boy, what are you doing?” he cried; but Samuel had darted away, trying to give out the slips of paper to the people as they came out at both doors. He was quite right in saying that everybody would know about it. The people took the slips and read them, and then they stopped to stare and exclaim to one another, so that there was a regular blockade at the doors of the church. By the time that a score of the slips had been given out the members had had time to get their wits back, and then there was an attempt to interfere.
“This is an outrage!” cried Mr. Curtis, and tried to grab Samuel by the arm; but the boy wrenched himself loose and darted around the corner, to where a stream of people had come out of the side door.
“Take one!” he exclaimed. “Pass it along! Let everyone know!” And so he got rid of a score or two more of his slips. And then, keeping a wary lookout for Mr. Curtis or any other of the vestrymen, he ran around in front again, and circled on the edge of the rapidly gathering throng, giving away several of the dodgers wherever a hand was held out. “Give them to everyone!” he kept repeating in his shrill voice.
“The evil-doers must be turned out of the church!”
Then suddenly out of the crowd pushed Mr. Hamerton, breathless and red in the face. “Samuel!” he cried, pouncing upon him, “this cannot go on!”