He felt nervous to the verge of collapse—­a new and really horrible experience.  His head was hot, his feet cold.  The temptation simply and crudely to give in, bundle down the pulpit stairs and bolt, was contemptibly great.  His eyesight played tricks on him.  Below there, in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners’ Sunday best.  Here and there a child’s light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris Verity’s russet-red plume and suit.

Time and again, since he began his sermon, had that dash of rich colour drawn his reluctant attention.  He recoiled from, oddly dreaded it—­now more than ever, since to him it rather mercilessly focussed the subject and impending climax of his denunciatory address.

The pause began to affect the waiting congregation, which stirred uneasily.  Some one coughed.  And Sawyer was a sufficiently practised speaker to know that, once you lose touch with an audience, it is next to impossible successfully to regain your ascendency over it.  Unless he was prepared to accept ignominious defeat he must brace himself, or it would be too late.  He abominated defeat.  Therefore, summoning all his native combativeness, he took his own fear by the throat, straightened his manuscript upon the desk, and vehemently broke forth into speech.

—­Did his hearers deny or doubt the truth of his assertions, suppose that he spoke at random, or without realization of the heavy responsibility he incurred in advancing such accusations?  They were in error, so he told them.  He advanced no accusations which he could not justify by examples chosen from among themselves, from among residents in this parish.  He would be false to his duty both to them—­his present audience—­and to his and their Creator, were he to abstain from giving those examples out of respect of persons.  Other occupants of this pulpit might have—­he feared had—­allowed worldly considerations to influence and silence them.

A nasty cut this, at the poor vicar-canon, increasingly a prey to distracted fidgets, sitting helpless in the chancel.

But of such pusillanimity, such time-serving, he—­Reginald Sawyer—­scorned to be guilty.  The higher placed the sinner, the more heinous the sin.—­He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril likewise, inasmuch as, at the dread Last Assize, he would be required to give account of his stewardship in respect of this sinful place.