"Precisely. They are happy. Leave them so. They have not the higher pleasures. Neither have they the higher perils. 'They sow not, neither do they spin.' But neither do they envy Solomon in all his glory. Jack Haslem and Dave Olden sleep all day in their coracles. They put down their lobster pots at night. Next day, they have caught enough of these ugly brutes to pay for a glorious drunk. Then sleep again. How can you add to such happiness? By building a schooner, and sending them out on the high seas, exposed to all the dangers of the deep; and they have to face hunger and cold and death, for what? A little more money, and a little more drink; and your sentence: Why didn't he leave us alone? Weren't we just as well off as we were? which is the everlasting song of your respected predecessor, only he put it in Latin: _Cui bono?_" He pondered deeply for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds sensible; but there is some vile fallacy at the bottom of it. Anyhow, I'll try. Father, give me your blessing!" "There again," I said, "see how innocent you are. You don't know the vernacular." He looked surprised. "When you know us better," I answered, in reply to his looks, "you will understand that by that formula you ask for a drink. And as I don't happen to be under my own roof just now--" His glorious laugh stopped me. It was like the ringing of a peal of bells. "No matter," he said. "I may go on?" "Certainly," I replied. "You'll have a few gray hairs in your raven locks in twelve months time,--that's all." "What a hare," I thought as I went home, "is madness, the youth, to leap over the meshes of good counsel, the cripple." Which is not mine, but that philosopher, Will Shakespeare; or is it Francis Bacon? CHAPTER V A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING Father Letheby commenced sooner than I had expected. I think it was about nine or ten days after his formal instalment in his new house, just as I was reading after breakfast the _Freeman's Journal_ of two days past, the door of my parlor was suddenly flung open, a bunch of keys was thrown angrily on the table, and a voice (which I recognized as that of Mrs. Darcy, the chapel woman), strained to the highest tension of indignation, shouted:--