"Yes! Why not? Cannot a man go to chapel, or, in other words, leave off going to church sometimes, without being taxed with irreligion? Look here, Mr Lee, you and I are about contemporaries, and do you know I think if we want to get on here in our different lines of life, the first thing we have to do is to learn of the people." "My duty here, sir," said the vicar, coldly, and growing very pale and upright, "is to teach." "So is mine," said Geoffrey, laughing; "yours spiritual, mine carnal; but, my dear fellow, the first thing we have to do, it seems to me, is to learn the right way to the people's hearts." Rhoda glanced from one to the other, and her pulses began to beat, as she clasped her hands on her lap and excitedly listened for more. "Perhaps so," said the vicar, coldly, and he glanced at the door, as if to bring the interview to an end, and yet not liking to leave Geoffrey there the master of the situation. "For instance, take your sermon last Sunday." "Mr Trethick!" cried the vicar, half rising. "Don't be offended, I mean no harm," said Geoffrey, smiling, "and I am not talking to an elder, but a contemporary, as I said before. Besides, Miss Penwynn heard it, and she shall be judge." "I beg, Mr Trethick," began the vicar, but on glancing at Rhoda's eager face, he determined not to be mastered in argument, especially upon his own ground. "I maintain," said Geoffrey, coolly, "that your sermon was a masterly bit of logic." The vicar stared. "A capital line of argument." Rhoda nodded. "Most scholarly." A faint flush began to appear in the vicar's cheeks. "In fact, an excellent sermon," said Geoffrey. "Then why do you allude to it?" said the vicar, rather warmly. "Because I maintain that it was perfectly unsuited for a simple-minded, ignorant congregation of fishermen and miners. What do they care about how Saint Augustine wrote, or Polycarp thought, or the doings of Chrysostom the Golden Mouthed? Your words about the heresies and the Gnostics and Manichaeans were all thrown away. The early days of the Church don't interest them a bit, but they can understand about the patriarchs and their troubles and weaknesses, because the masterly hand that wrote their lives painted them as men similar to themselves." "Mr Trethick!" "All right; I've just done," said Geoffrey. "There was another sermon of yours too, I heard you preach, a well-meant one, but somehow you did not get hold of them. You had taken the text about the apostles becoming fishers of men, and the rough fellows could not see that it was their duty to give up their boats and nets, and forsake their wives and little ones, as you downright told them they ought." "I hope I know my duty, Mr Trethick," said the vicar, sternly.