“This comes,” bitterly complained one of the deacons, “of a minister’s meddling with public affairs.”

But during the week following, Mr. Belcher had had a satisfactory interview with Mr. Snow, and on the morning of the flight of Benedict he drove in the carriage with his family up to the door of that gentleman’s church, and gratified the congregation and its reverend head by walking up the broad aisle, and, with his richly dressed flock, taking his old seat.

As he looked around upon the humbler parishioners, he seemed to say, by his patronizing smile:  “Mr. Snow and the great proprietor are at peace.  Make yourselves easy, and enjoy your sunshine while it lasts.”

Mr. Buffum never went to church.  He had a theory that it was necessary for him to remain in charge of his establishment, and that he was doing a good thing by sending his servants and dependents.  When, therefore, he entered Mr. Snow’s church on the Sunday morning which found Mr. Belcher comfortably seated there, and stumped up the broad aisle in his shirt-sleeves, the amazement of the minister and the congregation may be imagined.  If he had been one of his own insane paupers en deshabille he could not have excited more astonishment or more consternation.

Mr. Snow stopped in the middle of a stanza of the first hymn, as if the words had dried upon his tongue.  Every thing seemed to stop.  Of this, however, Mr. Buffum was ignorant.  He had no sense of the proprieties of the house, and was intent only on reaching Mr. Belcher’s pew.

Bending to his patron’s ear, he whispered a few words, received a few words in return, and then retired.  The proprietor’s face was red with rage and mortification, but he tried to appear unconcerned, and the services went on to their conclusion.  Boys who sat near the windows stretched their necks to see whether smoke was issuing from the poor-house; and it is to be feared that the ministrations of the morning were not particularly edifying to the congregation at large.  Even Mr. Snow lost his place in his sermon more frequently than usual.  When the meeting was dismissed, a hundred heads came together in chattering surmise, and when they walked into the streets, the report of Benedict’s escape with his little boy met them.  They understood, too, why Buffum had come to Mr. Belcher with his trouble.  He was Mr. Belcher’s man, and Mr. Belcher had publicly assumed responsibility for him.

No more meetings were held in any of the churches of Sevenoaks that day.  The ministers came to perform the services of the afternoon, and, finding their pews empty, went home.  A reward of one hundred dollars, offered by Mr. Belcher to any one who would find Benedict and his boy, “and return them in safety to the home provided for them by the town,” was a sufficient apology, without the motives of curiosity and humanity and the excitement of a search in the fields and woods, for a universal relinquishment of Sunday habits, and the pouring out of the whole population on an expedition of discovery.