Martin was as excellent a man as ever stepped upon neat's leather. He did his duty to the poor honourably and conscientiously, kept his church in good repair, looked after the parish schools, and was, in short, a comfort and a credit to all who knew him. He was also a married man, a circumstance whereof Peter tried to make the most; abusing him, forsooth, because he did not follow his own example of getting the girls into a corner to tell him about their little indiscretions and secret thoughts--a pastime to which that hoary old sinner was especially addicted;--or of worming himself into some private gentleman's family, and then frightening the lady of the house into fits by threatening to put her into a brick-kiln or red-hot oven, of which Peter pretended to keep the key, if she did not divulge to him the whole of her husband's secrets, and hand over the children in private to be stamped with Peter's mark. Many a once happy household had the old villain brought to misery by those scandalous intrigues; for the truth is, that he stuck at nothing which might tend to his own advancement, however infamous were the means. Had Martin been a reprobate like himself, he might possibly have endured him: as it was, his good character and decent habits were so many arguments for Peter to abuse him wherever he went. Martin had a son, who in due time was appointed his curate, and had a chapel to himself. This young, man, whose name was Augustine, was by no means so discreet a person as his father. He was of a moping and melancholy habit, very much addicted to the study of architecture, which he carried to such an excess that you could not be five minutes in his company without hearing him discourse about mullions, brackets, architraves, and flying buttresses, in a way that would have bewildered a stone mason. He got his chapel fitted up in such a style that it exactly resembled one of Peter's; and this he did, as he openly avowed, from a regard to the customs of antiquity. When Martin was told of this, he shook his head, caught up his walking cane, and stepped over to the chapel, where he found Augustine superintending the erection of a new oriel window, the design of which was gorgeous enough to eclipse the glories of the most brilliant butterfly of Brazil. "What's here to do?" quoth Martin, walking up the chancel. "Mighty handsome this, son Augustine, to be sure; but--don't it strike you that the effect is a little too Peterish? Mind, I do not object in the least to your making the chapel neat and tidy. I never thought, as brother Jack used to do, (though he is now becoming more sensible on those points,) that a church ought as nearly as possible to resemble a barn. On the contrary, I like to see everything in its proper place. But what's this?" continued he, tapping with his cane a kind of ornamented basin with a slab. "I don't remember ever having seen any thing of this kind before."