“Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse,” said the doctor, earnestly. “I thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I beg your pardon--I mean,” he added, hurriedly, “he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he was picking up his strength again and doing well!” “In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt,” returned the Deacon, scornfully, “and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost to eternal life forever. Not,” he continued in sanctimonious vindictiveness, “but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song.” “But what has he done?” persisted Dr. Duchesne. “Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!” “Dear me!” said the doctor, “so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?--not anybody's wife? Eh?” “He has entered the Church of Rome,” said the Deacon, indignantly, “he has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!” “But are you SURE?” said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than before. “Sure,” returned the Deacon angrily, “didn't Brother Bulkley, on account of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of practicing on an organ--he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in the tents of the Lord--in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a Jesuit priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown tongues? Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch who called him 'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish? Didn't he find him, who left here a man mortified in flesh and spirit and pale with striving with sinners, fat and rosy from native wines and fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy in colored apparel? And last of all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a rumor was spread far and wide that this miserable backslider was to take to himself a wife--in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who seduced him? What do you call that?” “It looks a good deal like human nature,” said the doctor, musingly, “but I call it a cure!” THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH