“Why not?  Ministers have often got lawyers to help them when they’ve been muddled on points of orthodoxy.  What the lawyer believes or don’t believe hasn’t got anything to do with it:  it’s his business to believe as his client does, and make other folks believe so, too.  Ray Bartram is just the sort of a fellow a man would want in such a case.  He’s got that way of looking as if he knew everything, just like his father had before him, that makes folks give in to him in spite of themselves.  Besides, he’ll say or do anything to carry his point.”

“Isn’t that putting it rather strong, Brother Quickset?”

“Of course it isn’t.  Don’t I know, I should like to ask?  Don’t I always hire him myself?”

“Oh!” That was the only word the other deacon spoke, but his eyes danced, and he twisted his lips into an odd grin.

“Oh, get out!” exclaimed the pillar of orthodoxy.  “You needn’t take it that way.  Of course what I ask him to do is only right:  if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t ask him.”

“Of course not, brother.  But think a moment:  do you really believe that any form of professional pride would persuade that young man—­proud as Lucifer, and just as conceited and headstrong, a young man who always has argued against religion and against every belief you and I hold dear—­to rise for prayers in an inquiry meeting, and afterwards say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper,—­a man whom a high-born fellow like Bartram must believe as near the animals as humanity ever is,—­to say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper that convinced him of the supernatural origin and saving power of Christianity?”

“I can’t believe he put it that way:  there must be something else behind it.  I’m going to find out for myself and do it at once, too.  This sort of nonsense must be stopped.  Why, if men go to taking everything Jesus Christ said just as He said it, everything in the world in the way of business is going to be turned upside down.”

Away went Deacon Quickset to Bartram’s office, and was so fortunate as to find the lawyer in.  He went right at his subject: 

“Well, young man, you’ve been in nice business, haven’t you?—­trying to go up to the throne of grace right behind a jail-bird, while the leaders and teachers whom the Lord has selected have been spurned by you for years!”

Reynolds Bartram was too new a convert to have changed his old self and manner to any great extent:  so he flushed angrily, and retorted,—­

“One thief is about as good as another, Deacon Quickset.”

Then it was the deacon’s turn to look angry.  The two men faced each other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set jaws.  The deacon was the first to recover himself:  he took a chair, and said,—­

“Maybe I haven’t heard the story rightly.  What I came around for was to get it from first hands.  Would you mind telling me?”

“I suppose you allude to my conversion?”