Chapter 7

Ben's Sudden Sickness--The Spurious Priest--Coristine as Doctor--Saved by the Detective--Anxiety at the Maple--A Pleasant Evening--Sunday Morning and Ben--The Lawyer Rides--Nash and the Dominie Talk Theology on the Road--At the Talfourds--Miss Du Plessis the Real--The False Meets Mr. Rawdon--Mr. Terry and Wilkinson at the Kirk.

"What is the matter with Ben?" asked Coristine, as they single-filed along the narrow path by the river.

"He's tumbled down over some grindstones, and hurt himself, and fainted right away," replied the youthful Tommy, pulling up handfuls of tall grass and breaking an occasional twig from a bush as he stumbled along.

"What are you to the Toners?"

"I ain't nuthun' to the Toners."

"How did you come to be their messenger, then?"

"I was runnin' to the farm to tell the widder that the priest was comin', when she come out cryin' and sent me off. Guess the priest's there by now."

"What priest is it you saw?"

"I didn't see no priest. Old Mum Sullivan, she saw him, and sent and told mother to tell widder Toner, 'cos she's a Roman, too. She said it was a new priest, not Father McNaughton, the old one, and she guessed he was all right, but she didn't like his looks as well as t'other's."

"Then you are not a Roman."

"Naw, what are you givin' us? I play a fife on the Twelfth."

"Oh, you are an Orangeman?"

"Yum, Young Briton, same thing."

"So, you Orangemen run to help the Roman Catholics when they are sick or want to know if the priest is coming, and then, on the Twelfth, you feel like cutting each other's throats."

"I don't want to cut nobody's throat, but we've got to sass 'em on the Twelfth to keep up the glorious, pious and immortal memory, and to whistle 'em down 'The Protestant Boys.' We've got three fifes and three drums in our lodge."

After more of this edifying conversation, the pair arrived at a clearing on the river, containing a house and some out buildings, not far from its bank. These communicated by a private road with the public one, which crossed the stream about an eighth of a mile farther on. Turning the corner of the barn, Coristine saw a gray-haired woman, and a clean shaven man in clerical garb, leaning over the prostrate figure of Ben.

"Are you a doctor, sir?" asked the tearful woman, rising and coming towards him.

"Not exactly, Ma'am," replied the lawyer; "but perhaps I may be of use."

He then leaned over the sick man, and saw that he not only breathed, but had his eyes open upon the world in quite a sensible way. "What is the matter?" he asked the reverend gentleman, who was also contemplating the recumbent Toner.

"He says his back is sore, paralyzed, and that he can't move a limb," replied the priest in an unprofessional tone.

"How did it happen, Mr. Toner?" enquired the lawyer; and Ben, in a feebly and husky voice, replied:--

"I was rollin' quite a loaud on the slaant, when I got ketched with a back sprain, and the loaud slipped and knocked me down, and rolled over my stummick. That's all."

"Quite enough for one time," said Coristine; "is there such a thing as a loose door, or some boards we can make into a stretcher, anywhere about?" Ben called to his mother to show the doctor where the door was that he was going to put on the hen-yard. This was soon found, and, a blanket or two being laid upon it, the clergyman and the improvised doctor transferred the groaning patient to it, and so carried him into the house, where they undressed him and put him to bed on his face. "Say, doctor, I'll choke like this," came from the bed in the sick man's muffled voice, to the lawyer, who was ordering the widow to get some hot water and provide herself with towels or cotton cloths. "No you won't, Toner; turn your head to one side," he called. "That's better," remarked the patient, as he took advantage of the permission, and then continued: "I'd like ef you'd call me Ben, doctor, not Toner; seems as ef I'd git better sooner that way." Coristine answered, "All right, Ben," and withdrew to a corner with the priest for consultation. "What's the matter?" asked the priest, in a businesslike, unsympathetic tone.

"So, you give me back my question. Well, as the water will be some time getting ready, and it will do our man no harm to feel serious for a few minutes more, I'll go into it with your reverence homeopathically. The root of his trouble is a whiskey back. That accidentally led to a muscular strain, involving something a little more paralyzing than lumbago. He has no bones broken in that strong frame of his, but the grindstones have bruised him abdominally. I hope my treatment for the root of the disease will be more successful than that of the oriental physician, who prescribed for a man that had a pain in his stomach, caused by eating burnt bread. The physician anointed him with eye salve, because he said the root of the disease lay in his eyes; had they been all right, he would not have eaten the burnt bread, and consequently would not have had the pains."

The priest chuckled beneath his breath over the story; then, with earnestness, asked, or rather whispered: "Will he get well soon?"

"Well enough, I think, to sit up in half-an-hour," replied the doctor of the moment.

"My dear sir, may I ask you to delay your treatment until I perform a religious office with your patient? This is a favourable time for making an impression," said the hitherto callous priest.

"Certainly, Father, only be short, for he is suffering physically, and worse from apprehension."

"I shall require all persons, but the one to whom I give the comforts of religion, to leave the room," called the priest aloud.

"It isn't the unction, Father?" cried Ben, piteously.

"Oh, doctor, the boy's not going to die?" besought the mother, at the boiler on the stove.

"I can answer for his reverence and myself," replied the lawyer; "he will not administer the last rites of the Church to the living, nor will I let my patient die."

Then he and the widow retired, as the priest took out a book, knelt by the bedside, and opened it. The reverend gentleman, however, was in too great a hurry to begin, and too little sensible how far his penetrating voice would carry, for, at the first words of the prayer, Coristine made an indignant start and frowned terribly. The words he heard were, "Oratio pro sickibus, in articulo mortis, repentant shouldere omnes transgressores et confessionem makere----"

He felt inclined to rush in and turn the impudent impostor and profaner of the sacred office out of the house neck and crop, especially as the poor mother took him by the arm, and, with broken voice through her tears, said: "O, doctor, doctor, it's the last words he's taking!" But his legal training acted as a check on his impetuosity, and, standing where he was, he answered the grief-stricken woman: "Never fear, Mrs. Toner, you and I will pull him through," which greatly comforted the widow's heart.

Five minutes passed by Coristine's watch, and then he determined to stand the nonsense no longer. He coughed, stamped his feet, and finally walked in at the door, followed by the widow. The pseudo priest was sitting on a chair now, listening to the penitent's confidences. "Time is up," said the lawyer fiercely, and the impostor arose, resumed his three-cornered black wideawake, pocketed his book, which really was a large pocket book full of notes in pencil, and expressed his regret at leaving, as he had another family, a very sad case, to visit that night. As he passed Coristine, the latter refused his proffered hand and hissed in his ear: "You are the most damnable scoundrel I ever met, and I'll serve you out for this with the penitentiary." The masquerader grinned unclerically, his back being to the other occupants of the house, and whispered back, "Not much you won't, no nor the halfpenny tentiary either; bye-bye!"

"How are you feeling, Ben?" the lawyer asked the sick man, as he approached his bedside.

"Powerful weak and so-er," replied the patient.

Coristine called the mother, poured some St. Jacob's Oil into the palm of her hand, and bade her rub down her son's back at the small. "Rub hard!" he said; and she rubbed it in. Three or four more doses followed, till the back was a fine healthy colour.

"How does that work, Ben?"

"It smarts some, but I can wriggle my back a bit."

Then the doctor poured some whiskey out of his flask in the same way and it was applied.

"Do you think you can turn round now?" he asked; and, at once, the patient revolved, lying in a more convenient and seemly position.

"Bring the hot clothes, Mrs. Toner, and lay them on the bruised part, as hot as he can stand it. The patient growled a little when the clothes were abdominally applied, one after the other, but they warmed him up, and even, as he said, 'haylped his back.'"

"Now, Ben, when did you take whiskey last?"

"I ain't had nary a drop the hull of this blessed day."

"Is that true?"

"Gawspel truth, doctor, so haylp me."

"If you don't promise me to quit drinking, I can do nothing for you."

"But he will promise, doctor; won't you now, Benny dear?" eagerly asked the mother.

"Yaas!" groaned the sufferer, with a new hot cloth on him; "yaas; I guess I'll have to."

Then, the perfidious doctor emptied his flask into a glass, and poured in enough oil to disguise its taste. Adding a little water, he gave the dose as medicine to the unconscious victim, who took it off manfully, and naturally felt almost himself again.

"Have you plenty coal-oil in the house, Mrs. Toner?" enquired the family physician; and the widow replied that she had. "Rub the afflicted parts with it, till they will absorb no more; then let him sleep till morning, when he can get up and go about light work. But, mind, there's to be no lifting of heavy weights for three days, and no whiskey at all."

With these words, Coristine received the woman's warm expressions of gratitude, and departed.

Tommy had gone, so the lawyer had to go back to the Inn alone, and in the dark. He turned the barn, before which one bundle of grindstones still lay, the one, apparently, that had floored Ben. Then he made his way along a path bordered with dewy grass, that did not seem quite familiar, so that he rejoiced when he arrived at the road and the bridge. But, both road and bridge were new to him, and there was no Maple Inn. He now saw that he had taken the wrong turning at the barn, and was preparing to retrace his steps, when a sound of approaching wheels and loud voices arrested him. On came the waggons, three in number, the horses urged to their utmost by drunken drivers, in whom he recognized the men that he and Wilkinson had met before they took the road to the Inn. Coristine was standing on the road close by the bridge as they drove up, but, as the man with the first team aimed a blow at him with his whip, he drew back towards the fence. "Shoot the d----d spy, boys," the ruffian cried to the fellows behind him, and, as they slacked their speed, the lawyer jumped the fence to put some solid obstacle between himself and their revolvers, which, he knew, they were only too ready to use. At that moment a horseman rode towards the party from the other side of the bridge, and, while aiming a blow with a stout stick at the first scoundrel, a blow that was effectual, called to the others, in a voice of authority, to put up their pistols "O Lord, boys, it's Nash; drive on," called one, and they whipped up their patient animals and rattled away in a desperate hurry. "You can come out now, Mr. Coristine," said the horseman; "the coast is clear."

"You have the advantage of me, sir," remarked the lawyer, as he vaulted back again into the road.

"No I have not," replied the other; "you called me a damnable scoundrel, and threatened me with the penitentiary, a little while ago. How's Toner?"

"I am obliged for your interference just now on my behalf, but must decline any intercourse with one who has been guilty of what I regard as most dishonourable conduct, profaning the sacred name of religion in order to compass some imfamous private end."

"My ends, Mr. Coristine, are public, not private, nor are they infamous, but for the good of the community and the individuals composing it. I know your firm, Tylor, Woodruff and White, and your firm knows me, Internal Revenue Detective Nash."

"What! are you the celebrated Mr. Nash of the Penetang Bush Raid?" asked the lawyer, curiosity, and admiration of the man's skill and courage, overcoming his aversion to the latest detective trick.

"The same at your service, and, as the best thing I can do for you is to take you to your Inn, a dry way out of the dew, you can get on my beast, and I'll walk for a rest," replied the detective, alighting.

Coristine was tired, so, after a little pressing, he accepted the mount, and, of course, found it impossible to refuse his confidence to the man whose horse he was riding.

"What did you do with your clerical garb?" he asked.

"Have it on," replied Nash; "it's a great make up. This coat of black cord has a lot of turned up and turned down tag ends, the same with the vest, and the soft hat can be knocked into any shape with a dift of the fist. With these, and three collars, and moustache, beard, and whiskers, that I carry in my pocket, I can assume half-a-dozen characters and more."

"How do you justify your assumption of the priestly character?"

"I want information, and assume any character to get it, in every case being guilty of deception. You think my last rôle unjustifiable because of the confessional. Had I simulated a Methodist parson, or a Presbyterian minister, or a Church of England divine, you would have thought much less of it; and yet, if there is any bad in the thing, the one is as bad as the other. Personally, I regard the confessional as a piece of superstitious ecclesiastical machinery, and am ready to utilize it, like any other superstition, for the purpose of obtaining information. Talk about personating the clergy; I have even been bold enough to appear as a lawyer, a quaker, a college professor, a sailor, and an actress."

"You have certainly led me to modify my opinion of your last performance."

"Which nearly gave me away. So you won't send me to the penitentiary; thanks! And now, as I said at first, how's Toner?"

"Oh, Toner's all right, with the fieriest skin on him that ever lay between two sheets. He has promised to give up drinking."

"It's very likely he'll have to."

"Why so?"

"They don't allow refreshments so strong in gaol."

"Be as easy as you can with the poor fellow, Mr. Nash."

"All depends on his future behaviour, and, in some other capacity, I shall let him know his danger."

As the two figures came down the road toward the Inn, a voice hailed them, the voice of the dominie. "Is Mr. Coristine there?" it shouted.

"Yes; here am I," came from the back of the horse.

"What bones are broken or wounds received?" was the pitiful but correct question.

"Not a bone nor a wound. Mr. Nash has treated me to a ride."

"Aw ça!" ejaculated Pierre, "M'syae Nasha homme treh subtil, treh rusé, conneh tout le monde, fait pear aux mauveh sujah."

"What is he?" asked the schoolmaster, speaking English, in his eagerness; and the landlord replied in the same.

"Ee is vat you call detecteur, police offisare vis no close on 'im. Anysing vas to go in ze custom house and goes not, he find it out. O, a veray clevaire mann!"

Coristine dismounted for the purpose of introducing his companion. Personally, he would as readily have performed this office on horseback, but he knew that the schoolmaster was a stickler for ceremony. While the introduction was going on, Pierre took Mr. Nash's horse by the bridle, and led the procession home. There, Madame stood in the porch eagerly waiting for news of "ce jeune homme si courageux, si benveillont," and was delighted to hear that he was safe, and that Mr. Nash, an old acquaintance, was with him. When the party entered the house, Wilkinson looked at the detective, and then, with a start, said: "Why, you are Dowling, the Dowling who came to the Sacheverell Street School, with a peremptory letter from the trustees, to take the lower division boys, and disappeared in ten days."

"The same, Mr. Wilkinson; I knew you as soon as I heard your voice."

"You disarranged our work pretty well for us, Mr. Dow--Nash. What were you after there, if it is a fair question?"

"I was after the confidence of some innocent youngsters, who could give me pointers on grindstones and their relation to the family income. As I know you both, and our friends of the hotel are not listening, I may say that I am so interested in this problem as to have made up my mind to go into grindstones myself."

These remarks led to an animated triangular conversation over the Grinstun man, in which the two pedestrians gave the detective all the information they possessed regarding that personage. They urged that an immediate effort should be made to hinder his acquiring the hand and property of Miss Du Plessis, and, thereafter, that united action should be taken to break up his injurious commerce. Mr. Nash prepared to accompany them on their walk to church in Flanders, and asked the lawyer if he had any objection to ride his horse part of the way, with a bundle behind him, if he, the detective, would carry his knapsack. Coristine consented, on condition that his new friend would also lend him his riding gaiters. Madame produced the wherewithal to spend a social half-hour before retiring, and, in answer to the detective, said: "Ze sack ees in ze commode in ze chombre of M'syae." Mr. Nash laughed, and over his glass and clay pipe, confided to his fellow-conspirators that he had a few little properties in that bag, and was much afraid that some of them would compel him to desecrate the Sabbath. "You are used to my religious performances, Mr Coristine; I hope your friend, and my old principal, Mr. Wilkinson, will not be as hard on me as you were."

Then the dominie was informed of the events of the evening, and the parties separated for the night.

Sunday morning dawned clear and cloudless, giving promise of a glorious day. Everybody in the inn was up before six o'clock; for at seven it was the intention of the three guests to take the road for a place of worship in Flanders. Ben Toner was waiting on the verandah for the appearance of Coristine; and, when that gentleman came out to taste the morning air, greeted him with clumsy effusion, endeavouring, at the same time, to press a two-dollar bill upon his acceptance. The lawyer declined the money, saying that he had no license to practise, and would, consequently, be liable to a heavy fine should he receive remuneration for his services. He enquired after Ben's health, and was pleased to learn that, while his heroic remedies had left the patient "as rayd as a biled lobister," externally, he was otherwise all right, except for a little stiffness. Mr. Nash came down-stairs, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweed, and sporting a moustache and full beard that had grown up as rapidly as Jonah's gourd. Going up to the man whom he had confessed the night before, he asked him: "Do you know me again, Toner?" to which Ben replied: "You bet your life I do; you're the curous coon as come smellin' round my place with a sayrch warnt two weeks ago Friday." Satisfied that his identity in Ben's eye was safe, the detective led him away on to the bridge, and engaged in earnest conversation with him, which made Mr. Toner start, and wriggle, and back down, and impart information confirmatory of that extorted the night before, and give large promises for the future. The two returned to the verandah, and, before the lawyer went in to breakfast, his patient bade him an affectionate farewell, adding, "s'haylp me, Mr. Corstine, ef I don't be true to my word to you and the old woman about that blamed liquor. What I had I turned out o' doors this mornin', fust thing, and I shaant take in no more. That there bailiff's done me a good turn, and I won't ferget him, nor you nuther, Doctor, ef so be it's in my power to haylp you any." Coristine took his leave of the simple-hearted fellow, and went to join the company at the breakfast table. Mr. Nash was there, but, for convenience of eating and not to astonish the host and hostess, he had placed his beard and moustache in his pocket. It was handy, however, and could be replaced at a moment's warning.

Batiste brought round the detective's horse, and the lawyer, in borrowed riding gaiters, bestrode him, hooking on to the back of the saddle a bundle somewhat larger than a cavalry man's rolled-up cloak. The bundle contained Mr. Nash's selected properties. That gentleman allowed Madame to fasten the straps of Coristine's knapsack on his shoulders, while Pierre did the same for Wilkinson. The dominie had paid the bill the night before, as he objected to commercial transactions on Sunday, so there was nothing to do but to say good bye, bestow a trifle on Batiste and take to the road. The detective, after they had done half a mile's pleasant walking, took command of the expedition, and ordered The Cavalry, as Coristine called himself, to trot forward and make a reconnoisance. His instructions were to get to the Carruthers' house in advance of the pedestrians, to find out exactly who were there, and to return with speed and report at headquarters, which would be somewhere on the road. Saluting his friend and his superior officer, the lawyer trotted off, his steed as well pleased as himself to travel more speedily through the balmy atmosphere of the morning. The dominie and his quondam assistant were thus left to pursue their journey in company.

"Do you enjoy Wordsworth, Mr. Nash?" asked Wilkinson.

"Oh yes," replied the detective, "the poet, you mean, We are seven, and the primrose by the river's brim. Queer old file in the stamp business he must have been. Wish I could make $2,500 a year like him, doing next to nothing."

"There is a passage that seems to my mind appropriate. It is:--

Us humbler ceremonies now await; But in the bosom with devout respect, The banner of our joy we will erect, And strength of love our souls shall elevate; For, to a few collected in His name. The heavenly Father will incline His ear. Hallowing Himself the service which they frame. Awake! the majesty of God revere! Go--and with foreheads meekly bow'd, Present your prayer: go--and rejoice aloud-- The Holy One will hear!"

"You should have been a parson, Mr. Wilkinson; you do that well. I'd like to take lessons from you; it would help me tremendously in my profession. But I find it mighty hard to do the solemn. That time in your school was almost too much for me, and your friend twigged my make-up last night."

"I find it hard," said the schoolmaster, "not to be solemn in such scenery as this on such a morning. All nature seems to worship, giving forth in scent and song its tribute of adoration to the Creator, to whose habitation made with hands we are on our way as worshippers."

"'Fraid I shan't do much worshipping, church or no church. You see, Mr. Wilkinson, my business is a very absorbing one. I'll be looking for notes, and spotting my men, and working up my clues all the time the parson's bumming away."

"Ah, you have read Tennyson's 'Northern Farmer'?"

"Never heard tell of it; but I've got my eyes on some northern farmers, and they'll have my attention soon."

"Your expression, 'bumming away,' occurs in it, so I thought you had found it there. It is rather a severe way in which to characterize the modern preacher, who, take him on the whole, deserves credit for what I regard as a difficult task, the presentation of some fresh subject of religious thought every Sunday all the year round."

"My mind works too fast for most of them. I can see where the conclusion is before they have half got started. There's no fun in that, you know."

"Do you not sometimes meet with clergymen that interest you?"

"Now and then. The learned bloke who cuts his text into three, and expounds them in detail, I can't stand; nor the wooden logical machine that makes a proposition and proceeds to prove it; nor the unctuous fellow that rambles about, and says, 'dear friends,' and makes you wish he had studied his sermon. But, now and then, I fall in with a man who won't let me do any private thinking till he's done. You hear his text and his introduction, and wonder, how the dickens he is going to reconcile the two. He carries you on and on and on, till he does it in a grand whirl at the end, that lifts you up and away with it, like the culminating arguments of the counsel for the prosecution, or the peeler's joyful run in of a long-sought gaol-bird. I like that sort of a parson; the rest are jackdaws."

"Perhaps they suit the average mind?"

"If they did, we ought to have graded churches as well as graded schools. But they don't, except, in this way, that people have got accustomed to the bumming. The preachers I like would keep up the interest of a child. There was one I heard on the text, 'I form the light and create darkness.' His introduction was, 'God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.' He jerked us up into the light and banged us down into the darkness, almost laughing one minute and crying the next. Then he went to hunt up his man, and found him in the devil and the devil's own, all fallen creations of God. Any schoolboy could follow that sermon and take its lessons home with him. There was a logical bloke, at least he thought himself logical, who took for his text Joseph's coat of many colours, a sort of plaid kilt I should think; and said, 'I shall now proceed to prove that this was a sacerdotal or priestly garment. First, it occupies a prominent position in the narrative; second, it excited the enmity of Joseph's brethren; and third, they dipped it in blood when they sold their younger brother.' I could have proved it as logically to be Stuart tartan, and, at the same time, the original of the song 'Not for Joe,' because he lost it before he became steward to Pharaoh. Bah! that's what makes people sick of going to church. I've pretty nigh quit it."

The pedestrians trudged on for a time silently, the detective, doubtless, revolving schemes in his brain, the dominie inwardly sighing over his companion's captious criticism, to which he could not well reply, and over the absence of his legal friend, whose warm Irish heart would have responded sympathetically to the inspiration of the Sabbath morning walk. At last, Mr. Nash resumed the conversation, saying:--

"I'm afraid, Mr. Wilkinson, that you think me a pretty hard-hearted, worldly man, and, perhaps, that my calling makes me so."

"I have no right to judge you, Mr. Nash," answered the schoolmaster; "but I should think that the work of hunting down law-breakers would have the effect of deadening one's sensibilities."

"It shouldn't, any more than the work of a clergyman, a doctor, a teacher, or a lawyer. We all, if we are honest, want to benefit society by correcting evils. I see a lot of the dark side of human nature, but a little of the bright too, for, thank Heaven, there is no man so bad as not to have some little good in him. There's that Toner, once a fine young fellow; I hate to see him going to the dogs, wasting his property, breaking his old mother's heart. I'd rather save that man any day than gaol him."

"Give me your hand, sir," said the dominie, heartily, transferring his staff to his left, and offering the right; "I honour you for the saying, and wish there were more officers of the law like you."

"Oh, as for that matter," replied the detective, "I and my colleagues have tried to save many a young fellow, but then--"

"What is the obstacle?"

"The obstacle is that there are men who simply won't be saved."

"Oh, I suppose that is true theologically as well as legally."

"Of course; if the law don't want to have a lot of criminals to hunt out and shut up and punish, it stands to reason that the Source of all law doesn't. But, for the good of society and the world, these criminals have to be separated from them, and their bad work stopped. To say that the law hates them, and takes vengeance on them like a Corsican, is utterly to misunderstand the nature of law. Yet, that is what nine-tenths of the parsons teach."

"That is very unfortunate."

"Unfortunate? it's diabolical. If I were to go into a good man's house, and present his children with a hideous caricature of their father, so as to terrify some and drive others clean away from him, wouldn't I deserve to be kicked out? I should think so! Now, I say every good thing in man must be found a million times better in man's Maker. If the foundation principle of human law is benevolence to society, the foundation principle of divine law must be something higher and better, not revenge. But you know these things better than I do."

"Not at all; I could not express myself better. What you have found out is stated by Dr. Whewell, the famous Master of Trinity, in the Platonic form, that every good thing in man and in the world has its archetype in the Divine Mind. Every bad thing, such as revenge and anger, has no such archetype, but is a falling away, a deflection, from the good."

"How do you explain the imputation of bad things to God, such as hate, revenge, terrorism, disease, death, beasts of prey, and all the rest?"

"In two ways; first, as a heathen survival in Christianity, borrowed partly from pagan national religions, partly from the misunderstood phraseology of the Old Testament; and, second, as the necessary result of a well-meant attempt to escape from Persian and Manichaean dualism."

"But there is a dualism in law, in morals, in nature, and in human nature, everywhere in this world; there's no getting over it."

"Of course there is, but the difference between the dualism of fact and that of the Persian system is, that the evil is not equal, but inferior and subordinate, to the good."

"It gets the upper hand pretty often, as far as this world is concerned."

"And why? Just for the same reason that bad governments and corrupt parties often get the upper hand, namely, by the vote of the majority, through which the minority has to suffer. Talk about vicarious suffering! Every good man suffers vicariously."

"These are deep things, Mr. Wilkinson, too deep for the average parson, who doesn't trouble himself much with facts unless he find them confirmed by his antiquated articles."

"Yet my attention has been drawn to them by thoughtful clergymen of different denominations."

"Well, I don't think I'll trouble the clergymen to-day, thoughtful or not thoughtful. I've had my sermon in the open air, a sort of walking camp meeting. What did they call these fellows who studied on the move?"

"Peripatetics."

"That's it; we're a peripatetic church."

"But, without praise or prayer or scripture lessons, which are more important than the sermon."

"Oh, you can do the praise and prayer part in a quiet way, as a piece of poetry says that I learnt when I was a boy. It ends something like this:--

So we lift our trusting eyes To the hills our fathers trod, To the quiet of the skies, And the Sabbath of our God.

That's pretty, now! Hallo! here's the doctor!"

Coristine came up at the gallop, and reported that all the people he expected to find at the Carruthers' were there, Grinstun man, Mrs. Carmichael, and Marjorie, included, all except Miss Du Plessis, who was staying at a house three miles this side of the farm, helping to nurse a sick neighbour.

"Has Rawdon seen her?" asked the detective. The lawyer did not know, but suggested that they could find out by calling at the house of Mrs. Talfourd, the sick woman, on the way.

"How far are we from it?" enquired Mr. Nash.

"About a mile or a mile and a-half," replied Coristine.

"Then, Mr. Wilkinson, let us stir our stumps a bit. Can you sing or whistle? There's nothing like a good tune to help a quick march."

"Yes; sing up, Wilks," cried The Cavalry; and the dominie started "Onward, Christian Soldiers," in which the others joined, the detective in a soft falsetto, indistinguishable from a half-cultivated woman's voice. He was combining business with pleasure, dissimulation with outward praise.

"Pretty good that for a blooming young lady of five foot ten," remarked Mr. Nash, at the end of the hymn.

"Blooming young ladies with a tonsure," replied Coristine, gazing on the detective's momentarily uncovered head, "are open to suspicion."

"Wait till you see my hair." chuckled the ex-priest.

The mile and a-half was soon covered, and the trio stood before a roomy farm-house. A boy, not unlike Tommy, but better dressed, was swinging on the gate, and him the detective asked if he could see Miss Du Plessis on important business. The boy ran into the house to enquire, and came back to the gate, accompanied by the lady in question. She changed colour as her eye took in The Cavalry, immovable as a life guardsman on sentry. The detective handed her his professional card, and explained that he and his two friends had been entrusted with the duty of protecting her property and herself. "You need have no doubts, Miss Du Plessis, for the Squire, as a J.P., knows me perfectly," he continued.

"I have no fear, Mr. Nash," answered the lady, in a pleasant voice, with just a suspicion of a foreign accent; "your name is known to me, and you are in good company."

Wilkinson, standing by his friend's stirrup, heard this last statement, and blushed, while The Cavalry thought he had heard a voice like that before.

"Has Mr. Rawdon seen you, or have you seen him?" asked the detective.

"Neither; but the two Marjories have been here, and have told me about him. They do not seem to admire Mr. Rawdon."

"The darlins!" ejaculated the lawyer; whereupon Wilkinson pinched his leg, and made him cry "Owch!"

The rest of the conversation between the plotters at the gate was inaudible. At its conclusion, the lady's face was beaming with amusement.

"Give me that bundle for Miss Du Plessis," said Nash to Coristine, who lifted his hat to her, and handed the parcel over.

"Now, for instructions," continued the commander-in-chief. "The Cavalry will go to Bridesdale, that's Squire Carruthers' place, and keep Mr. Rawdon from going to church, or bring him back if he has started, which isn't likely. This branch of the Service will also make sure that all children are out of the way somewhere, and inform older people, who may be about, that Miss Du Plessis is coming to the house during church time, and is very much altered by night-watching and sick-nursing, so that they need not express astonishment before Mr. Rawdon. Fasten these knapsacks about you somehow, Horse-Doctor; put the beast up where he'll get a drink and a feed; and go to church like a good Christian. The Infantry will halt for the present, and afterwards act as Miss Du Plessis' escort. Infantry, attention! Cavalry, form threes, trot!"

Coristine took the knapsacks, made another bow, and trotted away, while the dominie walked up to the gate, and was introduced to the fair conspirator.

After showing the detective and his bundle into an unoccupied apartment, Miss Du Plessis returned to the sitting-room where she left the dominie. In the few minutes at their disposal, he informed his new acquaintance of his chance-meeting with her uncle, of whose arrival in Canada she was in complete ignorance. The imparting and receiving this news established such a bond between the two as the schoolmaster had hitherto thought impossible should exist between himself and one of the weaker sex. Yet, in her brief absence, he had taken pains to dust himself, and shake up his hair and whiskers. His companion was preparing to tell how she had heard of him from Miss Carmichael, when another young lady, almost her counterpart in general appearance, entered the room.

"Now," said the newcomer, in a deep but feminine voice, "now the false Miss Du Plessis will go on with her nursing, while the real one takes Mr. Wilkinson's arm and keeps her appointment at the Squire's."

Miss Du Plessis clapped her hands together and laughed heartily. Wilkinson, thinking, all the time, what a pretty, musical laugh it was, could not help joining in the amusement, for Nash was complete from his wig down to his boots. The colonel's niece threw a light, woolly shawl over the detective's shoulders, and accompanied the pair to the gate, where, before dismissing them, she warned her double not to compromise her to Mr. Rawdon.

"I hope soon to have the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Wilkinson, under more favourable circumstances," she called after that gentleman, as they moved off, and then ran into the house to hide her laughter.

The dominie felt his face getting red, with a pretty young lady hoping to meet him again, on the one hand, and a not by any means ill-looking personation of one hanging on to his arm, on the other. After a minute, the detective withdrew his hand from his companion's arm, but continued to practise his assumed voice upon him, in every imaginable enquiry as to what he knew of Miss Du Plessis, of her friend Miss Carmichael, and of the working geologist's intentions. He was thus pretty well primed, and all promised well, till, within a quarter of a mile of the house, a vision appeared that filled him and the disguised Nash, to whom he communicated his fears, with grave apprehensions as to the success of the plot. It was no less a person than the veteran, Mr. Michael Terry, out for a Sunday walk with the Grinston man. Their dread increased as the old man came running forward, crying: "An' it's comin' back yez are, my darlin' Mish Ceshile. It's a throifle pale yer lookin', an' no wonder." Saying this, Michael shook hands with Nash, and whispered: "Niver fare, sorr, Mishter Coristine towld me all about it."

The made-up lady introduced her father's old servant to Wilkinson, whose apprehensions were dispelled in a similar way, so that all were prepared to give Mr. Rawdon the reception intended.

"Ullo, hold Favosites Wilkinsonia," cried the working geologist, swaggering up with a cigar in his mouth, "'ow's yer bloomin' 'ealth? That hold bloke of a Hirish haint in a 'urry to do the hamiable between 'is hold guvner's gal an' yours truly. My name, Miss, is Rawdon, Haltamont Rawdon, workin' geologist and minerologist, and, between you and me and the bedpost, a pretty warm man."

"Yes; Mr. Rawdon," replied the pseudo Miss Du Plessis, "you look--well, not pretty--but warm."

"O, dash it hall, that haint wot I meant, Miss Do Please-us; I mean hi'm a man that's got the dibs, the rhino, the blunt, you know, wot makes the mare go. I don't go geologizin' round for nothin'."

"You pick up stones, I suppose?"

"Yes; grinstuns, limestun grit, that's the stuff to make you jolly."

"I have heard of drawing blood out of a stone, Mr. Rawdon, but never of extracting merriment or exhilaration from a grindstone."

"Then you don't know my grinstuns, Miss; they're full o' fun."

"Are they indeed? How amusing! In what way does the fun display itself?"

"A bundle of my grinstuns, distributed at a loggin' bee, a raisin' bee, or a campaign caucus, ware there's a lot of haxes to grind, can make more fun than the Scott Act'll spile in a month. But silence is silence 'twixt partners, which I opes you and me is to be."

The fictitious Miss Du Plessis, with much simpering and affectation, quite unworthy of the original, drew the working geologist out, and inspired him with hopes of securing her hand and property. Mr. Rawdon spoke very freely of the wealth he had in the hand and in the bush, of his readiness to make allowance for Madame Du Plessis, if that "haffable hold gent," her brother in law, was not prepared to provide for her. When they reached the house, they found that no one was at home but Tryphena, who was confined to the kitchen by culinary duties. They, therefore, occupied the parlour, the Grinstun man seeing no impropriety in being there alone with a young lady whom he had met for the first time. Indeed, he was much gratified to find that the lady was not at all stiff and offish, as he had feared, but as "haffable as her huncle and more." The lady laughed, and blushed at loud compliments, as loud as the check of Mr. Rawdon's clothes, and asked flattering questions, which he answered with a jolliky and recklessness that almost astonished himself. Was there no romance, no spice of daring in his occupation? she had asked, and he, remembering that he was talking to a soldier's daughter, who would, doubtless, appreciate courage, replied enigmatically that the grinstun business was about the riskiest business on earth, and required 'eroism of no hordinary kind.

While this conversation was going on, the dominie and the veteran were walking churchward, for, as the former had signified his intention of going to a place of worship, the old man insisted on accompanying him.

"Oi was born a Catholic, sorr, and a Catholic Oi'll doie, though my darter is a Pratestant, and what's more, a Prosbytarian. She rades her Boible an' Oi rade moine, an' there's sorra a bit av differance betwane thim. If the church is good enough for her, it's good enough for the loikes av me."

"That is what I call being a Catholic in the truest sense of the term. We will not deprive people of the kingdom of Heaven because they refuse to go our way."

"Till me now, sorr, what's that that's pertindin' to be my dear young misthress, Miss Ceshile?"

"An old soldier knows how to keep a secret, I am sure. It is the famous detective, Mr. Nash."

"Sure I hope, by my sowl, that he'll make the crathur gnash his tayth. It was all I could do to kape my hands aff him, as we were walkin' along to mate yez. Him to make up to the cornel's darter, the misherable, insignifikint, bad shpokin, thavin' scrap av impidence!"

The church bell had ceased ringing, the horses and waggons were in the driving shed without any attendant, and, as the pair approached, they could hear the sound of hearty singing coming through the open windows. They entered together, the old man crossing himself as he did so, and sat down in a pew near the door. The schoolmaster saw that the church was that of Mr. Errol, who occupied the pulpit. He looked round, but could not see his friend Coristine; nor was little Marjorie anywhere visible. They must have strolled on farther to Mr. Perrowne's consecrated edifice for the sake of the walk. Then, with reverent mind, the dominie joined in the simple worship of the Kirk.