The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as Patty's talk. For he had not expected this sort of an opening. If she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road would have been plain. But now that she loved him and forgave him of her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised? Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet. He had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage, but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion. He talked about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his gambling. But she did not. Could it be that she had not heard of it? Must he then reveal that to her also? While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger "fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said. Morton thought it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist: there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud praying of the meetings into ridicule. And Morton became conscious that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to confess his conversion. He thought it better to return to his gambling for a starting point. "Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?" "Oh! yes. I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say any more about it, Morton. You're too good for me with all your faults, and you won't do it any more." "But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was gone. I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--" "But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about it because it isn't pleasant. It'll all come out right at last: I'd a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard Methodist, like Kike, for instance." "But--" "I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word. Not one word. I want you to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right." You think Morton very weak. But, do you know how exceedingly sweet is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else? Poor Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so much of storm. It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes. At last he rose to go. He felt himself a Peter. He had denied the Master!