"There's one thing I've al'ays done, Jerry," said Rankin, leaning over in a more confidential attitude, "and that's this. I've al'ays drawed the line at the little woman and the kids; I've al'ays said I'd never compromise them or their future, and I say that so long's a man don't do that, he's doin' all right." For some reason that morning Rankin seemed to be in a soft and tender mood, and showed a desire to talk of his home and its interests. Perhaps it was because it was Sunday, and his wife had been dressing him for the day with as much maternal solicitude as she had dressed his children. Garwood would have preferred Rankin's harsher and more careless note, and because it gave him a chance to get away, was glad when he remembered that he had promised his mother to go to church with her. He knew how gratifying this would be to her, for in her strict Sabbatarianism she had disliked his going down town at all that day; and then, too, he had felt that it would be a politic thing to do. He went homeward, recalling, word by word, all of his conversation with Rankin, feeling a little hurt at what seemed to him Rankin's coldness, troubled with suspicions and misgivings that he ascribed to the influence of Rankin's strange manner, and without the peace of mind he thought he should feel, now that his election was assured. He found his mother with her bonnet on, and her misshapen hands gloved and folded, in anxious waiting. "What time does church begin?" he asked. "Half-past ten, the last bell rings," said Mrs. Garwood. "My goodness!" her son exclaimed, as he hurriedly snapped his watch lid shut, "I thought it was at eleven o'clock." The old lady's face winced with a jealous resentment. "You're thinkin' of the 'piscopalian church," she answered significantly; "they always does things different." They walked to church while the bells were ringing, the Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist churches tolling their bells one after another, a note at a time, each tolerantly waiting its turn, though the different keys in which their bells were pitched rang out in a sharp disharmony their doctrinal distinctions. Far away over on the East Side, Garwood heard the chimes of the Catholic church, holding aloof from all this dissonance of the clamoring creeds, while the Episcopalians had no bell in their church, disdaining with a fine superior quality of respectability to enter into the brazen polemics.