In half an hour Cloudy was "once more upon the waters," in full sail for
Baltimore.
CHAPTER XXXV.
MARIAN.
Great was the consternation caused by the arrest of a gentleman so high
in social rank and scholastic and theological reputation as the Rev.
Thurston Willcoxen, and upon a charge, too, so awful as that for which
he stood committed! It was the one all-absorbing subject of thought and
conversation. People neglected their business, forgetting to work, to
bargain, buy or sell. Village shopkeepers, instead of vamping their
wares, leaned eagerly over their counters, and with great dilated eyes
and dogmatical forefingers, discussed with customers the merits or
demerits of the great case. Village mechanics, occupied solely with the
subject of the pastor's guilt or innocence, disappointed with impunity
customers who were themselves too deeply interested and too highly
excited by the same subject, to remember, far less to rebuke them, for
unfulfilled engagements. Even women totally neglected, or badly
fulfilled, their domestic avocations; for who in the parish could sit
down quietly to the construction of a garment or a pudding while their
beloved pastor, the "all praised" Thurston Willcoxen, lay in prison
awaiting his trial for a capital crime?
As usual in such cases, there was very little cool reasoning, and very
much passionate declamation.
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