it seemed as if the sky were tumbling down through the church roof. That's great singing; eh, doctor? Cost only three hundred extra; worth a thousand on the church market!" "Yes," said the doctor, "I was pleased with the man's voice. I am impressed with the idea that there is more than larynx and training in him. There must be bigness and sweetness of soul behind those tones. Men can't sing that way to order. Come, Brisk, introduce us when those young women get through talking to him. I know I shall like him. But I didn't know that you were so well up in musical judgment." "Why, doctor," rejoined Brisk, "it doesn't require that a man shall be an electrical engineer in order to invest successfully in a trolley." The dominie was a bachelor. That was a pity; for a wife and family of ten could have homed themselves in his heart without detracting from the love he had for everybody else. But having no wife to console him after the efforts of a hard Sunday, he was accustomed to ask one or another of the young men to come to the study and "curry him down," as he said, after evening service. Soon Vox came to occupy permanently this place of clerical groom. The saintly folk who thought that the light burning until Sunday midnight in the sanctum was a sign of the protracted devotions of their pastor would, on one occasion at least, have been astounded to see the reality. On the lounge was stretched the tired preacher, his feet on a pile of "skimmed" newspapers, reserved for the more thorough perusal they would never get. In his lap lay the head of a big collie, whose eyes were fixed on the handsome face of his master. Do dogs have religious instinct? If so, this was a canine hour of worship, and the dog was a genuine mystic. In some famous pictures of the adoration of the Magi less reverence and love are depicted on the faces than gleamed from beneath the shaggy eyebrows of the brute. By the study-table sat Vox, his big bushy head and square Schiller-cut face (except for the very unpoetic mustache) bending over a chafing-dish that sent up the incense of Welsh rarebit, the ingredients of which were the offering of the landlady's piety. "Doctor," said Vox, suddenly poising the spoon as if it were a baton, and dripping the melted cheese on to the manuscript of the night's sermon before the preacher had decided whether to put it into his "barrel" or his waste-basket--"doctor, do you know that I feel like a hypocrite, singing in a Christian church?" "You a hypocrite, Vox? You couldn't act a false part any more than you could sing a false note without having the shivers go all through you."