The Rev. Bryan McClosky had been for fifteen years in charge of St. Clement’s Church, a dingy and unbeautiful brick structure on an obscure street in South Micklegard. His congregation were chiefly poor working-people; and the few outsiders who recognized the rare qualities of head and heart which were joined to his unimpressive and somewhat undignified exterior, were disposed to wonder that the authorities of his Church, with all their well-known tact and skill at making the most of their material, should have kept such a man so long in such an obscure position. Perhaps, however, the authorities, as usual, knew their own business best. Bryan McClosky was by birth one of the people among whom he labored. His father had been an Irish peasant, and Bryan’s first memories of home were of a cabin wherein pigs and chickens were as much members of the household as himself. Natural talent and education had done much to raise him above the level of his former associates, but he was still one of them at heart. By his present congregation he was simply idolized; and, though they stood in no manner of awe of him, the real reverence which they gave and he fully deserved was not at all impaired by his readiness to laugh and joke on all but _very_ improper occasions. Into his religious opinions there would seem to be no need to inquire, since they were to be found in the doctrinal formulas of a Church which tolerates no private judgment of such matters. Nevertheless, there had not been wanting, in high ecclesiastical quarters, rumors as to the potential heterodoxy of Father McClosky,—a heterodoxy which showed itself in just a little over-charity towards heretics, and a too great readiness to unite with them in schemes for the public welfare. He had even been admonished once or twice—or, if that word be too harsh, gently interrogated—on these matters, but in every case was able to prove himself so clearly right, and within the letter of the law, that the only results were, on the part of the authorities, a conviction that while it was best to keep him where he would do least harm, it would also be wisest not to drive him to extremities; and on his side, a habit of good-humored denunciation of his Protestant friends as heretics, and destined to a considerable amount of future discomfort, which, accompanied by a twist of his mouth and a twinkle of his black eyes, was, as he often remarked, “perfectly orthodox, and hurt nobody.”