[Footnote B:  The Denne.]

“And you believe this?” said the listener, half incredulously, half respectfully, when his elderly companion ceased.

“I do—­firmly.”

The other smiled, and then continued in a lower tone—­

“All delusion! the result of a heated fancy—­all delusion from beginning to end!”

“What is delusion?” said a tall military-looking figure, striding up and joining the group.  “We all have, at one period or other of our lives, to battle with delusion and succumb to it.  Now. sir,” turning to the elder gentleman (his name was Ancelot) and making a courteous bow—­“pray favor me with your case and symptoms.”

The party addressed looked nettled, and replied—­

“Mine was no delusion; it was a stern and solemn reality.”

“Well, give it what name you please,” returned his companion, “only let Major Newburgh hear the tale as you narrated it to me.”

“To be again discredited?  Excuse me, Trevor, no.”

“Oh! but,” interposed the major, “I’m of a very confiding disposition.  I believe everything and every body.  The more extraordinary the narrative, the more faith am I inclined to place in it.  Trevor, there, as we all know,” added he, laughingly, “has a twist.  He’s a ‘total abstinence’ man—­a homeopathic man—­a Benthamite, and secretly favors Mesmerism.  With such abounding faith upon some points, we will allow him to be somewhat skeptical upon others.  Come, your narrative.”

“At the sober age of two-and-forty, a period when the season of delusion is pretty well over,” said Mr. Ancelot, pointedly, “I found myself in charge of a notorious fishing-village on the coast of Lincolnshire.  It was famous, or rather infamous, for the smuggling carried on in its creeks, and for the vigilant and relentless wreckers which it numbered in its hovels.  ‘Rough materials!’ said the bishop, Dr. Prettyman, when I waited upon him to be licensed to the curacy—­rough materials to work upon; but by care and diligence, Mr. Ancelot, wondrous changes may be effected.  Your predecessor, a feeble-minded man, gave but a sorry account of your flock; but under your auspices, I hope they will become a church-going and a church-loving people!  Make them churchmen—­you understand me?  Make them churchmen!’...  Heaven help me!  They needed first to be made honest and temperate—­to be humanized and Christianized!  ‘Church-loving and church-going!’ The chaplaincy of Newgate is not, perhaps, a sinecure; that of the Model Prison at Pentonville has, probably, its hours of toil; and that attached to Horsemonger Lane is not entirely a bed of roses; but if you wish to wear a man’s heart and soul out; to depress his spirits and prostrate his energies—­if you would make him long to exchange his lot with the day-laborer who whistles at the plow,—­station him as a curate, far apart from his fellows, in a village made up of prize-fighters, smugglers, and wreckers!” To my lonely cure,