“All you say about my fondness for attack may be very true; but see whether it has half the effect in this parish of the superstition of its pastor,—or of the system which made him its pastor:—I care not which may claim the honour of doing most mischief.” “I grant that thy principles have led to no murder here, and that the vicar would have been wise to ask himself, while censuring thee, whether he was not playing thy game for thee better than thou couldst do it for thyself. But, friend, that is no excuse for thy being as intolerant to others as the church has been to thee. Between you, religion (or, as thou wouldst say, morals) has had so little chance, that I would not advise either of you to boast of the other’s delinquencies, lest the argument should end in the display of thine own.—I will only just mention the name of Byrne, as a sanction to my charge.” “You do not think he is the——” And Mr. Mackintosh’s countenance now showed some emotion. “I have heard no one named as the murderer,” Mrs. Lambert quietly replied. Mr. Mackintosh presently repented having allowed Alice to be brought in. It made him completely wretched. Whether her grief was ungovernable, as at first, or mild and reasonable, as it was when Mrs. Lambert had been with her awhile, it was equally painful to him. He could do nothing with minds but question and taunt them; and here, where the mind was too childish to be questioned to any purpose, and too much harassed to allow of taunting, there was no inducement to him to bear to witness the suffering. When he was tired of being first ashamed of his own helplessness, and then of being cross with his housekeeper, (who would not quarrel with him, because she saw he was trying to carry off some troublesome tenderness) he seized his hat, and walked out.—Mrs. Lambert observed, that he went in the direction of Byrne’s cottage. CHAPTER VIII. BENEFIT OF CLERGY.