Harry Wainright made not the slightest objection to going back home, and he acted very much like a man who was glad of the company in which he found himself. The divine of the canoe looked at his blistered hands, and paid the resuscitated clerk to send the boat back by the first steamer. While Fred Macdonald was crossing the river, Tom Adams kindly drove back the road and recovered Parson Wedgewell’s coat and hat, and the parson accepted the hospitalities of the boat to the extent of water, soap, and towel. He attempted to make his peace with the injured clerk; but that functionary, having already interviewed Tom Adams, insisted that no apology was necessary, and asked the old gentleman in what church he preached. As the party started back, they saw, coming through a cross-road, a buggy violently driven, and containing two men--who proved to be Squire Tomple and Father Baguss--in a vehicle belonging to the latter; their air of having merely happened there deceived no one, least of all Harry Wainright himself. Father Baguss did not live in town, nor within four miles of it; but when Squire Tomple suggested that he would beg a ride back in Tom Adams’s wagon, Father Baguss objected, and remarked that he guessed he had business in town himself; so the Squire retained his seat, and Father Baguss fell in behind the wagon as decorously as if he was taking part in a funeral procession. Behind them came Fred Macdonald, who had good excuse to gallop back to the peculiar attraction that awaited him in Barton, but preferred to remain in his present company. As the party approached the town, Tom Adams considerately drove through the darkest and most unfrequented streets, and stopped as near as possible to Wainright’s house. Wainright, politely declining any escort, walked quietly home. Father Baguss stood up in his buggy, with his hand to his ear, in the original position of attention: suddenly he exclaimed, “There! I heard his door shut: _now_, brethren.” And Father Baguss started the doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and the glorious harmonies of the old choral were proof even against the tremendous but discordant notes which Tom Adams, with the most honorable intentions, interjected in rapid succession. Then the party broke up. The two pastors escorted each other home alternately and several times in succession, during which apparently meaningless proceeding they learned, each from the other, how much of good intent had been stifled in both of them for lack of prompt application. Crupp and Tomple talked but little, and no “Imaginary Conversation” would be at all likely to reproduce what they said. Father Baguss made the whole air between Barton and his own farm redolent of camp-meeting airs, and Fred Macdonald heard in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor something sweeter than all the music ever written. As for Tom Adams, he jogged slowly toward his employer’s stables, repeating to himself,