"I presume you wish to talk to me, Major Keene? I shall be glad to hear any thing that you may have to communicate or explain. It is my duty as well as my desire to be useful to any member of my congregation, however little disposed they may be to avail themselves of their privileges. Interested, as I must be in the welfare of all committed to my charge, I need hardly say that the course you have chosen to pursue here has caused me great pain and anxiety--I own, not so much for your sake as that of others, to whom your influence was likely to be pernicious. What I heard this morning makes matters look still worse. I wish I could anticipate any satisfactory explanation." The old _ex cathedra_ feeling came back upon him while he was speaking; his tone, gradually becoming rounder and more sonorous, showed this. Was he so besotted by sacerdotal confidence as to fancy that he could win that grim penitent to come to him to be confessed or absolved? Since the chaplain first saw him Royston had never changed his attitude. He was leaning with his shoulder against the corner of rock round which the path turned, standing half across it, so that no one could pass him easily. The dense blue cloudlets of smoke kept rolling out from his lips rapidly, but regularly, and his right hand twined itself perpetually in the coils of his heavy brown mustache. That gesture, to those who knew his temper well, was ever ominous of foul and stormy weather. He did not reply immediately, but, taking the cigar from his mouth, began twisting up the loose leaf in a slow, deliberative way. At last he said, "You did that rather well this morning. How much did you expect to get for it? My wife is liberal enough in her promises sometimes, when she wants to make herself disagreeable, but she don't pay well. You might have driven a better bargain by coming to me. I would have given you more to have held your tongue." His tone was such as the other had never heard him use--such as most people would be loth to employ toward the meanest dependent. No description can do justice to the intensity of its insolence; it made even Mr. Fullarton's torpid blood boil resentfully. "How dare you address such words to me?" he cried out, trembling with rage. "If it were not for my profession--" "Stop!" the other broke in, rudely; "you need not trouble yourself to repeat that stale clap-trap. You mean to say that, if I were not safe from your profession, I should not have said so much. It isn't worth while lying to yourself, and I have no time to trifle. The converse is the truer way of putting it. You know better than I can tell you that, if you had been unfrocked, you would never have ventured half what you have done to day. You don't stir from hence till this is settled. Do you suppose I'll allow my private affairs to be made, again, an occasion for indulging your taste for theatricals?" The chaplain flushed apoplectically. He just managed to stammer out,