The molecule arrived, that summer, in the person of a curly-haired young expounder of the Nicene Creed who came to spend July and August at the mountain inn where Scott, after the fashion of needy students New England over, was alternately engaged in keeping the books and sorting up the mail. It was by way of this latter function that Scott first came to be on speaking terms with the youthful rector of Saint-Luke-the-Good-Physician's. And the rector, despite his four hyphens and the gold cross that dangled on the front of his ecclesiastical waistcoat, was an honest, unspoiled boy who was quick to realize the curious appeal in the loneliness of Scott, to realize it and to answer to it. The early steps of their acquaintance were limited to the daily handing out the letters, the daily thankful accepting them. Then, one morning, Scott so far forgot his official and personal manners as to comment upon the familiar imprint of one of the envelopes, as it was changing hands. He made instant apology; but his penitence was forgotten in the discovery that the curly-headed divine was also an old student of Professor Mansfield. The rest of the steps were logical and consecutive, down to those final days of August when together, hard-working, would-be student and holiday-making, prosperous divine, they spent Scott's leisure hours afield, talking, talking, talking of the things one only mentions to one's spiritual next of kin. Before he left the mountains, Scott's mind was made up definitely to the step which was next before him. He knew that step would grieve his mother, would well-nigh break her heart. None the less, he was resolved to take it. Indeed, in honour, it seemed to him no other course was open to him, albeit, in his more downright moments, he realized that the taking it was nothing in the world but a miserable sort of compromise between his mother's wishes and his own. He had given her his word that he would be a preacher; keep his given word he must and would. Nevertheless, preaching, he must choose for himself a gentler sort of gospel than the lurid, flaming fires delighted in and set forth with all the cunning of word imagery, by every Parson Wheeler of his line. His God should be an honest gentleman, and not an all-pursuing Thing of Wrath.