"Guess I've given him fits!" she said, relapsing into one of her Aunt Emily's American colloquialisms, with happy unconsciousness that this particular phrase coming from her pretty lips sent a kind of shock through John's sensitive nerves. "He's not a very pleasant man to meet anyway! And it isn't altogether agreeable to be cursed on the first morning of my return home. But, after all, it doesn't matter much, as there's a clergyman present!" And her blue eyes. danced mischievously; "Isn't it lucky you came? You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can't you? What do you say when you do it? 'Retro me Sathanas,' or something of that kind, isn't it? Whatever it is, say it now, won't you?" Walden laughed,--he could not help laughing. She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so bewitchingly pretty. "Really, Miss Vancourt, I don't think I need utter any special formula on this occasion," he said, gaily. "You have done a good action to the whole community by dismissing Leach. Good actions bring their own reward, while curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Pray forgive me for quoting copybook maxims! But, for the curse of one ill-conditioned boor, you will have the thanks and blessings of all your tenantry. That will take the edge of the malediction; don't you think so?" She turned her mare in the homeward direction, and began to guide it gently down the slope. Walking by her side, John held back one of the vast leafy boughs of the great trees to allow her to pass more easily, and glanced up at her smilingly as he put his question. She met his eyes with an open frankness that somewhat disconcerted him. "Well, I don't know about that!" she replied. "You see, in these days of telepathy and hypnotic suggestion, there may be something very catching about a curse. It's just like a little seed of disease;--if it falls on the right soil it germinates and spreads, and then all manner of wicked souls get the infection. I believe that in the old days everybody guessed this instinctively, without being able to express it scientifically,--and that's why they ran to the Church for protection agaiast curses, and the evil eye, and things of that sort. See how some of the old Scottish curses cling even to this day! The only way to take the sting out of a curse is to get it transposed"--and she smiled, glancing meditatively up into the brightening blue of the sky. "Like a song, you know! If it's too low for the voice you transpose it to a higher key. I daresay the Church was able to do that in the days when it had REAL faith--oh!-- I beg your pardon!--I ought not to say that to a man of your calling." "Why not?" said Walden; "Pray say anything you like to me, Miss Vancourt;--I should be a very poor and unsatisfactory sort of creature if I could not bear any criticism on my vocation. Besides, I quite agree with you. The early Church had certainly more faith than it has now."