“I reckon you won’t,” answered Hilary coolly, and it turned out that he was right; for, with the addition of such scientific instruction as Lewis could impart, the two boys were very evenly matched in their future encounters, which were purely friendly and in the interests of sport. The boys became fond of each other in a surreptitious way, for Hilary never came to see Lewis, and an instinctive delicacy kept Lewis from going to Newington. But they met on the river, out fishing, and in the woods setting their hare-traps, and they exchanged whispers during church-time. On Sundays Lewis sat alone in one of the great square high-backed pews, which still remained in the old colonial church of Abingdon. That unlucky singularity of luxury which was the bane of poor Lewis’s life actually followed him to church, for Skelton’s was the only upholstered pew in the church; and instead of the faded moreen curtains of the other pews, when they were curtained at all, there was a fine purple-silk drapery, behind which the lonely boy sat forlornly. He was the only person who went to church regularly from Deerchase. Bulstrode scoffed at the notion, and Skelton alleged usually that he was too busy. Once in a great while, though, he would saunter into church about the second lesson. Conyers, who feared no man, not even Skelton, would stop deliberately in the midst of the sermon as a rebuke to Skelton. Skelton, however, would be perfectly unmoved by it, as well as by the hundreds of curious eyes bent upon him, and would walk down the aisle with his inimitable grace and a half-smile on his lips. Conyers, though, by that strange contrariety which seems to govern human affairs, found his best supporters in Skelton and Bulstrode, whom he expected to be his most powerful foes. So far from antagonising Conyers on account of the public rebuke administered upon his tardiness, Skelton respected him for it, and never failed to speak to the parson politely before all the people as they gossiped in the churchyard. It was not Skelton’s way to withhold the meed of justice due any man, and he saw at a glance that the stern, scruple-ridden, conscientious moralist had a very hard time with his merry, free-handed, pleasure-loving congregation--the pastor intolerant of pleasure, the flock intolerant of pain.