was, that Mr. Craik had become a teetotaller, “for you know, old fellow, that gives me such a pull in persuading the drunkards;” a third reason was, that there was a bit of land in the middle of the village, just the thing for a site, and worth nothing, covered with stones and thistles.  Mr. Craik said he should have such a much better congregation, he felt sure, if the church was not in such an extremely inconvenient out-of-the-way place; that aged saint, who was gone, had often regretted the inconvenience for the people.

Valentine at last gave him the site.  Mr. Craik remarked on what a comfort it would have been to the aged saint if she could have known what a good churchman her heir would prove himself.

But Valentine was not at all what Mr. Craik meant by a good churchman.  Such religious opinions and feelings as had influence over him, had come from the evangelical school.  His old father and uncle had been very religious men, and of that type, almost as a matter of course.  In their early day evangelical religion had been as the river of God—­the one channel in which higher thought and fervent feeling ran.

Valentine had respected their religion, had seen that it was real, that it made them contented, happy, able to face death with something more than hope, able to acquiesce in the wonderful reservations of God with men, the more able on account of them to look on this life as the childhood of the next, and to wait for knowledge patiently.  But yet, of all the forms taken by religious feeling, Valentine considered it the most inconvenient; of all the views of Christianity, the most difficult to satisfy.

He told the vicar he did not see why his grandmother was to be called a saint because she had gone through great misfortunes, and because it had pleased her to be trundled to church, on all Sundays and saints’ days, besides attending to the other ordinances of the church and the sacraments.

When he was mildly admonished that a site seemed to presuppose a church, he assented, and with one great plunge, during which he distinctly felt, both that his position as landlord was not to be defended, and that this good use of the money might make things more secure, he gave a promise to build one—­felt a twinge of compunction, and a glow of generosity, but blushed hotly when Mr. Craik observed that the old church, being put in decent repair, and chiefly used for marriages and for the burial service, it might, perhaps be a pleasing testimony, a filial act, to dedicate the new one to St. Elizabeth, “Simply in reverend recollection, you know, Melcombe, of that having been—­been your grandmother’s name.”