Surely, I thought, he’ll be satisfied now, and I tried to draw him away from the crowd, who were becoming a trifle too much interested in our name and identity. But no; not a bit of it. The excitement was full upon him still. So up he went to the harmonium (they had now started a hymn), and looking over the shoulder of the performer (she was a pretty girl of eighteen) he began to sing as lustily as the best of them. By degrees his arm, I saw, began to steal about her waist, and, fuss and fidget as she might, she was powerless to help herself. Her hands were occupied with the keyboard, and her feet with the blower, and with her voice she had to lead the singing. So he had her at his mercy, and hugged her disgracefully, while she, poor girl, was powerless to resist. The audience all thought she was his sister, and highly commended him, it was clear, for the countenance and support he was giving her. While the last line of the last verse was being sung, the temptation became too strong for resistance, and Ronald stooped down and kissed her—an action which touched still further the sympathetic heart of the audience. “A dear, good young feller that, as ever I see’d”—said an old lady in my immediate neighbourhood. “I only wish as how he were a son of mine; a preachin’ that fine, for all the world like the Bishop, and a’ lookin’ arter his sister so prettily—and a nice young girl she is too.” After this exploit he slipped across the circle and joined me, and a minute later—with hot and blazing cheeks—I was thankful to find myself round the corner, and well on the way home before the throng of listeners had begun to disperse. I felt, indeed, as must that Bishop, who, to oblige a small girl younger in years than in experience, condescended to ring at a street door, and was rewarded with the advice, “Run! _run_ for yer life! they’ll knock the ’ead off yer shoulders if they catches ye.” I wonder what he elected to do? pocket his dignity and run? or rely upon his clerical attire to see him through? In any case our anxiety would be more protracted. What if the escapade should reach our uncle’s ears? However I was spared this climax. The story of it got wind in the servants’ hall, as all stories do; but the servants were far too loyal to Master Ronald to betray him, and so it never made its way up stairs to the drawing room. * * * * * But the career of that preacher was ended—in Bayview. Our Rector WE had two, if not three, celebrities in our village. The Rector is dead; the Clerk is dead; the Professor still lives. But, independently of this claim to our respect, let us give precedence to the Church. Less than fifty years ago the services in a parish not ten miles from one of our well-known watering places were done—or left undone—by surely the queerest cleric of his time.