At this turn of the conversation, Thompson insisted upon my lighting a pipe and joining him in the gin and water. We smoked for many minutes in silence. My friend had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had drawn the table nearer to his warm and hospitable fire. A log of wood was burning slowly and steadily away, and a small, bright--very bright--copper kettle overlooked it from the hob. My host had fixed his feet upon the fender--the unemployed hand was in his corduroys. His eyes were three parts closed, enjoying what from its origin may be called--a pure tobacco-born soliloquy. The smoke arose in thin white curls from the clay cup, and at regular periods stole blandly from the corner of his lips. The silent man was blessed. He had been happy at his work; he had grown happier as the sun went down; his happiness was ripening at the supper table; _now_, half-asleep and half-awake--half conscious and half dreaming--wholly free from care, and yet not free from pregnant thought--the labourer had reached the summit of felicity, and was at peace--intensely. A few evenings only had elapsed after this interesting meeting, before I was again spending a delicious hour or two with the simple-hearted and generous upholsterer. There was something very winning in these moments snatched and secured from the hurricane of life, and passed in thorough and undisturbed enjoyment. My friend, notwithstanding that he had engaged my services, and was pleased to express his satisfaction at the mode in which I rendered them, was yet alive to my interests, and too apprehensive of injuring them by keeping me away from loftier employment. He did not like my being _thrown out_ of the chapel, especially after he had heard my determination not to forsake immediately the sect to which I had attached myself. He was indifferent to his own fate. His worldly prospects could not be injured by his expulsion; on the contrary, he slyly assured me that "his neighbours would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had great power in _the Church_, and if I represented my case to either or both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do