in its cause, dares to trust that natural inclination.  Dissent in the first generation is usually admirable and almost always respectable:  men don’t leave the Church for fun, but because they have thought and discovered, as they believe, something amiss in her—­something which in nine cases out of ten she would be the better for considering.  But dissent in the second and third generation usually rests on bad temper, which is not admirable at all, though often excusable because the Church’s persecution has produced it.  Believe me, my dear Vicar, that if all the bishops followed your example and slept on their wrath against heresy, they would wake up and find nine-tenths of the heretics back in the fold.  Indeed I wish your good lady would let you pack your nightcap and come with us.  You could hire a curate over from Falmouth.”

“Could I write my pamphlet at sea?”

“No:  but, better still, by the time you returned the necessity for it would be over.”

The Vicar smiled. “You counsel lethargy?—­you, who in an hour or two start for Corsica, and with no more to-do than if bound on a picnic!”

“Ay, but for love,” answered my father.  “In love no man can be too prompt.”

“I believe you, sir,” hiccuped Mr. Fett, who had been drinking more than was good for him.  “And so, begad, does your man Priske.  Did any one mark, just now, how like a shooting star he glided in the night from Venus’ eye?  Love, sir?” he turned to me.  “The tender passion?  Is that our little game?  Is that the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?  O Troy!  O Helen!  You’ll permit me to add, with a glance at our friend Priske’s predicament, O Dido!  At five shillings per diem I realize the twin ambitions of a life-time and combine the supercargo with the buck.  Well, well! cherchez la femme!”

“You pronounce it ‘share-shay?’” inquired Mr. Badcock.  “Now I have seen it spelt the same as in ‘church.’”

“The same as in ch—?” Mr. Fett fixed him with a glassy but reproachful eye.  “Badcock, you are premature, premature and indelicate.”

Here my father interposed and, heading the talk back to the Methodists, soon had the Vicar and the little pawnbroker in full cry—­parson and clerk antiphonal, “matched in mouth like bells”—­on church discipline; which gave him opportunity, while Nat and I at our end of the table exchanged the converse and silences of friendship, to confer with my Uncle Gervase and run over a score of parting instructions on the management of the estate, the ordering of the household, and, in particular, the entertainment of our Trappist guests.  Perceiving with the corner of his eye that we two were restless to leave the table, he pushed the bottle towards us.

“My lads,” said he, “when the drinking tires let the talk no longer detain you.”