Then our hero caught Smithers by the hand, and drawing him into the recess of a window, whispered in a low and rapid tone, "You are not insensible to the charms of being useful to one's fellow-creatures. I implore you to renounce your fearful calling—and I will supply you with the means to enter upon some other pursuit."
Smithers did not answer for a few moments: he appeared to reflect profoundly.
"Yes—I will follow your advice, sir," he at length said: "but not quite yet! I must hang up that rector—and then, _then_ I will abandon the calling for ever!"
With these words the executioner turned abruptly away, caught Gibbet by the hand, and hurried from the room.
A few minutes afterwards Richard Markham and Benstead also took their departure, each in a different direction; but the police-officer's pocket contained substantial proofs of our hero's liberality.
A week passed away, during which the examination of Reginald Tracy took place before the police-magistrate, and terminated in the committal of the rector to Newgate.
The whole town rang with the extraordinary events which had led to this crisis in the career of a man whose very name had so lately inspired respect.
The clergy were horror-struck at the disgrace brought upon their cloth by this terrific explosion; for people grew inclined to look upon real ecclesiastical sanctity as nothing more nor less than a garb of rank hypocrisy.
Some ministers of the gospel, more daring and enthusiastic than the rest, boldly proclaimed from their pulpits that Reginald Tracy was a saint and a martyr, against whom a horrible conspiracy had been concocted in order to remove the imputation of murder from the young female who had been discharged, and fix it on him.
Other clergymen entered into learned disquisitions to prove that Satan must have obtained especial leave from God, as in the case of Job, to tempt the most holy and pious of men; and that, having failed to seduce him from the right path, the Evil One had accomplished a series of atrocities all so artfully arranged as to fix the stain upon the rector of St. David's.
But there were some reverend gentlemen, who, having always been jealous of Reginald Tracy's popularity, descanted in significant terms upon the shallowness of mere eloquence in the pulpit, and the folly of running after "fashionable preachers." One venerable and holy gentleman, who had been married three times, and had received from his wives an aggregate of seventeen pledges of their affection, bitterly denounced in his sermon the "whitened sepulchre," "tinkling cymbal," and "unclean vessel," who had dared to set his face against the sacred institution of matrimony.