A FEW Sundays after that, Mr. Cole’s heart was gladdened by the sight of Madame Koller and the bundle of cloaks and mufflers she called her mamma, walking in church just as the morning service was beginning. The little clergyman felt inspired. He fancied himself like Paul before the Athenians. Olivia Berkeley was there too, and the Colonel, who settled himself in his pew to catch Mr. Cole in a false syllogism or a misquotation--anything to chaff the reverend gentleman about during the coming week. Mr. Cole did his best. He laid aside his manuscript and indulged in an extempore address that warmed the orator, if not the congregation, with something like eloquence. The Hibbses were there too--a florid, well-dressed family, Mr. Hibbs making the responses in a basso so much louder than Mr. Cole’s mild treble that it seemed as if Mr. Hibbs were the parson and Mr. Cole the clerk. “I tell you what it is my dear,” Colonel Berkeley had said angrily to his daughter half an hour before when the Hibbses swept past them up the flagged walk through the churchyard, “the religion of these infernal Hibbs people is what disgusts me most. They made their money in the war of 1812. Up to then they were shouting Methodists--I’ve heard my father swear it a hundred times--” The Colonel belonged to a class, not uncommon in Virginia, who regarded the Episcopal Church as a close corporation, and resented with great pugnacity any attempt to enter it on the part of the great unwashed. It was the vehicle chosen by the first families to go to heaven in, and marked “Reserved.” Hence the Colonel’s wrath. His church was a church founded by gentlemen, of gentlemen, and for gentlemen, and it was a great liberty for any other class to seek that aristocratic mode of salvation. “Now, damme, the Hibbses are the greatest Episcopalians in the parish. I am as good a churchman as there is in the county, but begad, if I want such a set of vulgarians worshiping under the same roof and rubbing elbows with me when I go up to the Lord’s table. I think I gave that young Hibbs fellow a setback last communion Sunday which will prevent him from hustling up to the rail before his betters.”