Happily, at this juncture, Father Krum received a “call” to a church in another diocese, and he accepted it promptly, sending in his resignation of his position as the assistant minister at St. Cadmus’s. Father Tunicle, then, of his own motion, offered to abandon, as not absolutely essential to salvation, the use of black book-markers upon Good Friday; whereupon Mr. Yetts and his adherents in the vestry declared themselves satisfied, and once more resumed their accustomed places in the sanctuary on Sunday.
Upon the second Sunday after the disappearance of Mr. Cowdrick, Father Tunicle, who held stoutly to the theory that his late vestryman had been murdered, resolved to refer indirectly in his remarks from the pulpit to the bereavement; and upon his invitation, Mrs. Cowdrick and Leonie attended the church, heavily veiled, to obtain what consolation might be possible from the services.
Father Tunicle, being somewhat pressed for time during the preceding week, had procured from a dealer in such commodities, at the price of three dollars, an original sermon addressed to persons in affliction, and this he brought with him into the pulpit, wrapped in Leonie’s worked velvet sermon-cover. The fact that the sermon was nicely lithographed, so that it closely resembled manuscript, made it quite impossible for any one to suspect that it was not the product of Father Tunicle’s own intellectual effort and of his earnest sympathy. The discourse was divided into four parts; three heads, and an affecting application; which, at three dollars for the whole, of course amounted to just seventy-five cents a part--not too much, surely, for so wholesome and comforting a sermon.
Father Tunicle preached it with much eloquence; but Mrs. Cowdrick, despite an occasional sob beneath her veil, managed to restrain her feelings until Father Tunicle had gotten through with one dollar and a half’s worth of the sermon, and had begun upon the third head. Then Mrs. Cowdrick could stand it no longer. One passionate outburst of grief followed another, until, when the attention of the entire congregation was directed to Mrs. Cowdrick, the sexton came in, and led her in a fainting condition down the aisle to the door, where she was placed in the carriage with Leonie, with nothing to solace her but the reflection that everybody in the church, including the odious De Flukes, _must_ have noticed her sealskin sacque and her lovely diamond earrings.