"I've done my best to keep him out of the place," said Anthony, with some bitterness. "The fellow is a rank dissenter to begin with, and does a great deal of underground mischief of other kinds. I say nothing against his character; I believe he deludes himself with the belief he is in the right, and I dare say makes a good enough clerk, though it's a pity he should have found an employment to keep him here. But I do not consider it advisable to listen to his talk." Frank took no notice of Anthony's tone, which had in it an imperious touch. He said as if he were replying to a calmly conducted argument,-- "The question is scarcely whether or no one will listen. Merely as a matter of cold prudence, it is surely better policy to help a stream to find safe channels than to refuse it a passage through your land." "That is the talk which will ruin the country," Anthony said coldly. "Every doctrine nowadays has but one basis,--expediency." "I don't understand what you are talking about," said Bessie, who was playing, a gigue with quaint trills and turns in an undertone, "but I am quite sure that Anthony is right." "Yes, I think he is right," said Mrs Orde, sighing. She was looking at her son, and admiring his sweet temper, but for all that she thought it was necessary to oppose his opinions, lest they should carry him too far. Winifred was glancing from one to the other, with her eyes dilating and then melting. "Well," Frank said good-humouredly, "it sometimes requires greater courage to stick to the popular side than to go against it. If my doctrine is ruining the country, the want of it is injuring David Stephens, unless I am much mistaken." "All the better,--if it drives him out of the place." "O Anthony!" said Winifred, in a low tone of hurt reproach. He looked round and saw she was on the other side, and grew a little white. Frank looked at the same moment and brightened. "It is wiser not to mix one's self up with such persons," said Mrs Orde, talking exactly contrary to what she would have done, as people often do. "No, mother," said Captain Orde, becoming grave, "that is a very helpless receipt. I suppose you don't want me to say that I don't agree with the end to which this man's thoughts have led him? But they have surely in some measure been forced upon him, and I hold that we are to blame for it, and are responsible. I should be very glad to convince him that we have a common interest, instead of dwelling with such persistence upon our points of antagonism." "You must excuse my doubting the wisdom of your plan," Anthony said in the tone the conversation seemed to have awakened in him. "My own conviction is that, for the sake of others, these men should be put down with a strong hand."