In the end it came about naturally enough that he should stay on. A little church in the town had lost by death a clergyman, twenty years in its service. The little band of communicants were fastidious and conservative. In the disaster which had for a time swept down all the barriers in the community they had become deeply interested in Dick. His hallmarks were so much finer than any they had ever dreamed possible to secure for their church, that it was with some trepidation that they suggested that he stay on with them. They were even willing to wink at what their richest member, a grumbling stockholder in the Emma mine, called his "revolutionary notions." The Bishop was willing to wink at them too. "They need you, boy," he had told him, "even more than they want you. They are in a fair way to die of respectability. You can perhaps resurrect them; but don't try to do it by shock treatment. You have the advantage of not being an applicant." And, consenting only for an accommodation, Dick accepted, and remained. He soon came to call Sabinsport home. Moreover, he was happy. He realized in his leisure moments, of which he had few enough, that he was happy without several things that he had supposed essential to happiness--without a home, a wife, a child, companions of similar training and outlook to his own. The town interested him profoundly. It was his first close contact with an old American town which had undergone industrial treatment. He felt its cosmopolitan character, something of which the inhabitants themselves were quite unconscious. As a matter of fact, all sorts of people were blending in Sabinsport. A thin pioneer stream of Scotch, Irish and English had settled the original lands, and early in the nineteenth century had selected as their trading post the point on the river which had afterwards become Sabinsport. The port had prospered amazingly in those first days. After forty years and more it looked as if it were destined to be the metropolis of that part of the world. Then the first railroad came across country, and it left Sabinsport out. A smaller, poorer rival, some twenty-five miles away, secured the prize. Slowly but surely the trade that had so long put into Sabinsport changed its course to what only too soon they began to call the City. Fewer and fewer boats came up the river, fewer and fewer coaches and laden wagons came from the up-country. The town submitted with poor grace to its inevitable decline. To this day Dick found that the older families particularly were jealous of the city and resented its unconscious patronage. It had become the habit in Sabinsport to sneer at the city as vulgar, pushing and brutal, though these feelings did not prevent her from patronizing its shops and amusements.