Judge Cottaway, Squire Woodhouse, Principal Alleman, Mr. Radley, and the founder of the class contracted a habit of meeting informally at each other's residence, and as subscription papers increased in numbers soon after, there was little or no curiosity manifested by their late associates to know what was talked about at these meetings. It was a noteworthy fact, and the subject of much dismal head-shaking among the churchly, that these five men represented four different denominations, and that they finally deprived Father McGarry's flock of a member who had several times listened to the discussions of the club in its earlier days, whom they failed to provide with a new denominational faith in place of his old one. As for Captain Maile, he was thereafter the most shamefaced and silent man at Valley Rest. He was by no means the first man who had mistaken the critical faculty for character; but he was not a man of large information in the history of the world outside of Valley Rest, so he spent several years of his life in indignant yet humble self-questionings as to his peculiar mental organization. He finally admitted to himself that to keep his fault-finding disposition under control, he must devote more persistent attention to it than he had ever given his better self before. Several years later he identified himself closely with all the practical work of the Second Church, and distinguished himself as being the man of all others who could accept advice without showing impatience.