Men who go into the church appear sadly ignorant of the old Latin proverb, _Poeta nascitur non fit_! They ascribe unto themselves two gifts which they believe that they possess, the gift of literary composition, and the gift of oratory; neither of which one man in a hundred, perhaps, possesses separately, and not one in ten thousand, together! And yet the generality of clergymen seem to think that they can not only write a good sarmon, but preach it also; hence these dismal, dreary platitudes, and over-and-over-again schoolboy-themes or truisms which set most of us to sleep every Sunday in the family pew. The short homily of the early clericals was far better than the prosy sermon, of unconscionable length, delivered by the moderns; all of whom seem to think that they were born and brought up, and mercifully ordained to be popular preachers, and nothing else! The war waged by the campaigner against the young incumbent of Hartwood church was not one of guns of precision and bloodshed. It was a very rosy sort of campaign, all rose-coloured, fought with honied words and sugar plums, and meant to end in orange blossoms and marriage settlements; only a lawsuit in which the conflicting parties and ends were the languid Laura, and an establishment, _versus_ the celibacy of Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon. Everything favoured the campaigner's manoeuvres. You see, she had the field clear to herself. The bait she offered was very tempting, and summer in the country is a most dangerous time for young, unmarried men. A week in rural retreats will sometimes do more in the Hymeneal line than weeks of London fashionable life: Coelebs who laughs the hook to scorn, however so delicately baited in town, may be hooked at once with a gaudy May-fly down in the country. Besides, the Reverend Herbert was by no means averse to be caught. He, with all his Oxford experiences, must have to some extent perceived the motives Lady Inskip had for so pressingly cultivating his society; but he did not seek cover as the poor, hunted fox so artfully does. He really found the languid Laura too bewitching to be resisted; so, with hardly a coy make-believe of alarm at what he was doing, he eagerly swallowed the bait, hook and all. Ever since the pic-nic, Herbert Pringle had become the devoted cavalier of Lady Inskip's eldest daughter. Morning, noon, and night, the little dapple-grey animal which the young incumbent bestrode was to be seen tied up to the gateposts of Laburnum Cottage: substantial proof that Pringle was within. Of course this was during the intervals of parochial duties which were by no means heavy, as Hartwood, and Bigton too, for that matter, had no poor to speak of, the population being agricultural, living well on their weekly wage, and inhabiting comfortable looking stone houses with pleasant flower gardens in front, and vegetable compounds in the rear.