The Methodist body had determined to discipline
Mazarine, to eject him from their communion, because he had raised a whip
against his wife; because he had maltreated Li Choo; and because he had
used language unbecoming a Christian. They had decided that Mazarine had
not shown the righteous anger of a Christian man, but of one who had
backslided, and who, in the words of Rigby the chemist, "Must be spewed
out of the mouth of the righteous into the dust of shame."
That was the situation when Joel Mazarine drove furiously into the town
and made for the railway station. Men like Jonas Billings, who saw him,
and had the scent for sensation, passed the word on downtown, as it is
called, that something "was up" with Mazarine, and the railway station
was the place where what was up could be seen. Therefore; a quarter of an
hour before the arrival of the express which was to carry Orlando Guise's
mother to her sick sister three hundred miles down the line, a goodly
number of citizens had gathered at the station-far more than usually
watched the entrance or exit of the express.
Mazarine's wagon and steaming horses were tied up outside the station,
and inside on the platform Moses-not-much, as Mazarine had been called by
Jonas Billings, marched up and down, his snaky little eyes blinking at
the doorway of the station reception-room. People came and some of them
nodded to him derisively.
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