Tozer's pathos touched a lighter chord in the bosom of the minister. He came back to his seat with a passing sense of amusement. "If Pigeon has anything to find fault with, let him come and have it out," said Vincent, bringing, as his mother instantly perceived, a less clouded countenance into the light of the lamp. "You, who are a much better judge than Pigeon, were not displeased on Sunday," added the minister, not without a certain complacency. Looking back upon the performances of that day, the young Nonconformist himself was not displeased. He knew now--though he was unconscious at the time--that he had made a great appearance in the pulpit of Salem, and that once more the eyes of Carlingford, unused to oratory, and still more unused to great and passionate emotion, were turned upon him. "Well, sir, if it come to be a question of that," said the mollified deacon; "but no--it ain't that--I can't, whatever my feelings is, be forgetful of my dooty!" cried Tozer, in sudden excitement. "It ain't that, Mr. Vincent; it's for your good I'm a-speaking up and letting you know my mind. It ain't the pulpit, sir. I'll not say as I ever had a word to say against your sermons: but when the minister goes out of my house, a-saying as he's going to visit the flock, and when he's to be seen the next moment, Mrs. Vincent, not going to the flock, but a-spending his precious time in Grange Lane with them as don't know nothing, and don't care nothing for Salem, nor understand the ways of folks like us----" Here Tozer was interrupted suddenly by the minister, who once more rose from his chair with an angry exclamation. What he might have said in the hasty impulse of the moment nobody could tell; but Mrs. Vincent, hastily stumbling up on her part from her chair, burst in with a tremulous voice-- "Arthur, my dear boy! did you hear Susan call me?--hark! I fancied I heard her voice. Oh, Arthur dear, go and see, I am too weak to run myself. Say I am coming directly--hark! do you think it is Susan? Oh, Arthur, go and see!" Startled by her earnestness, though declaring he heard nothing, the young man hastened away. Mrs. Vincent seized her opportunity without loss of time.