That was what troubled Mary. That was why she could not laugh when her mother made merry over sceptical youths. He who had spoken so well and so strangely, down there by the Argo, was not a sceptical youth, but a man of most vehement convictions. And she felt that she would be clay in his hands. His faith, was formed; hers would be formed upon it. Formed upon it? Crushed against it, rather! For, after all, though of a deeply religious nature, as was plain, had he any religion? That was the way we Virginians[1] looked at it. If you were not orthodox, you didn’t count. If you were not for us, you were against us. “I look upon all Protestant ministers as wolves in sheep’s clothing,” said a Catholic to me. Per contra, I once asked a Presbyterian minister—a friend of mine—how he rated Catholicism. “What do you mean?” “Do you look upon it as a religion, for example?” He was a good fellow, and wished to be charitable. He hung his head. He felt half ashamed of what he was going to say. But he said it. Slowly raising his eyes to mine, he answered, in a voice full of sadness, “I do not. I regard it as worse than nothing.” Ah, we were out-and-outers in those days! An error was worse than a crime. _That_ could be atoned for, with the one, by confession and absolution; with the other by repentance, even at the eleventh hour. But getting into the wrong pew! “_A blind horse tumbles headforemost into a well. He did not know it was there! Does that save his neck?_” Ole Virginny nebber tire! Such was the atmosphere which our Mary breathed. And—strange psychological paradox—just in proportion as her faith weakened did its terrors grow darker to her mind. That yawning gulf, upon the brink of which she used to tremble as a little child, seemed to have opened again. She believed less—she feared more. The peace she had gained was gone. The old dark days had come back. One cannot serve two masters; for either— But faith or love—which? ----- [1] Why _Virginians_? Can this so-called Mr. John Bouche Whacker be a carpet-bagger?—_Ed._ CHAPTER LXII. One day, Mary burst into Alice’s room. “Read that,” said she; and she threw herself upon the lounge, with her face to the wall. Alice was a brave little soul; but Mary’s pale face and tear-stained cheeks upset her, and her hands shook a little as she unfolded the letter. She read the first page with eager haste and contracted brows; then turned nervously to the last (the sixteenth), and read the concluding sentence and signature. “Why, what _can_ the matter be, Mary? It begins well, it ends well?” “It is the same all through.” “The same all through! And you crying! Upon my word, Mary, you—” “Read it.” Those satirists who claim that nothing can stop a woman’s tongue have never tried the experiment of handing her a love-letter. Over Alice there now came a sudden stillness, chequered only by exclamations of delight,—