The Krum section of the vestry made another charge, striking the door with terrible force, but still failing to effect a breach. At this moment one of Father Tunicle’s acolytes emerged from the side-door and attempted to glide down the street in search of a policeman. He was captured by one of the besieging force, and held as a prisoner. He brought the news that Father Tunicle had stopped short in the service when the first blow was struck against the door, and that the entire garrison was now rallied in the vestibule, where they were fortifying the portal with the baptismal font, the episcopal chair, some Sunday-school benches, and a lectern.
Mr. Krum remonstrated with Mr. Yetts, and entreated him not to proceed any further. He urged that it was a dreadful thing for Christian men to create such a disturbance upon the Sabbath-day.
“I don’t know about that!” replied Mr. Yetts, who was now warm with wrath and with excitement. “When Peter did wrong didn’t Paul ‘withstand him to the face’?”
“Yes; but, my dear Mr. Yetts, think of it! St. Paul did not try to batter down the church door on a Sunday morning with a log of wood! You are going too far!”
“Times have changed since then,” said Mr. Yetts. “Paul probably never encountered precisely such an emergency. Once more!” exclaimed Mr. Yetts to the assailants. “Give it to ’em hard this time!”
Seizing the beam, the vestrymen and their friends advanced once more to the attack. Three times was the door smitten without effect, but when the fourth blow was struck it gave way, and was flung wide open, revealing Father Tunicle and his friends, standing amid a mass of overturned and wrecked furniture, pale with rage and dismay, and ready to defend with force the citadel which thus was exposed to the enemy.
The crowd sent up a shout of satisfaction, and the intrepid Yetts, with his five vestrymen, regarded their triumph with exultation.
What they would have done next, if they had been permitted to press forward through the breach, can only be imagined. For a moment it looked as if beneath that spire which idly pointed these men toward a better country, whence rage and hatred and all evil passions are shut out, and beneath the bell, whose function was to send vibrating through the tremulous air its summons to the temple of the Prince of Peace, there might be a hand-to-hand encounter, in which priest and people should assail each other with furious violence.