The Doctor examined it carefully.  It was a woman’s or girl’s note, he thought.  Might come from one of the school-girls who was anxious about her spiritual condition.  Handwriting was disguised; looked a little like Elsie Venner’s, but not characteristic enough to make it certain.  It would be a new thing, if she had asked public prayers for herself, and a very favorable indication of a change in her singular moral nature.  It was just possible Elsie might have sent that note.  Nobody could foretell her actions.  It would be well to see the girl and find out whether any unusual impression had been produced on her mind by the recent occurrence or by any other cause.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.

“I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself,” he said.

The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his usual professional tone,—­

“Put out your tongue.”

The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak character,—­for people differ as much in their mode of performing this trifling act as Gideon’s soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook.  The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.

“It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily,” said the Reverend Mr. Fairweather.

“Is your appetite as good as usual?” the Doctor asked.

“Pretty good,” the minister answered; “but my sleep, my sleep, Doctor,—­I am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of my future,—­I am not at ease in mind.”

He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved his chair up close to the Doctor’s.

“You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the last few months.”

“I think I do,” the old Doctor said.  “You want to get out of the new church into the old one, don’t you?”

The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret.  As the old Doctor was his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody’s confidant in trouble, he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of sentiments through which he had been passing.  He was too late with his information, it appeared; and there was nothing to be done but to throw himself on the Doctor’s good sense and kindness, which everybody knew, and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he should pursue.  He began, after an awkward pause,—­

“You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to the true church, would you?”