The minister meditated in silence, as one who had the gift of penetrating beyond his fellows into the mystery of sin.  Now he was distrustful:  the time might soon come when he would be desperate.  I think he almost longed for the power to become a proselyte to any active communion, even if it proposed but a new whitewashing of the sepulchre which hides the corruptions of society.  Notwithstanding the vigorous words he had spoken, I knew him for one who could never take hearty satisfaction in denouncing any form of Error, because always fated to discern behind it the muffled figure of Truth.  More than most men he felt the pressure of an awful fact which weighs upon such as are gifted with any fine apprehension of these worlds of spirit and matter,—­namely, the impossibility of drawing anywhere in Nature those definite lines of demarcation which the mind craves to limit and fortify its feeble beliefs.  If the boundaries of the animal and vegetable kingdoms are hopelessly interlaced, it is only an image of the confusion in which our blackest sins are shaded off into the sunlight of virtue.

“But why am I here?” exclaimed Clifton, suddenly starting to his feet.  “I can at, least swim a few desperate strokes against this current, before sinking beneath it forever!  I can do something to save a few ardent maidens from this whirling water of Reform!

“And yet,” he continued, after a pause, “yet many, perhaps most of these wretched people, drained dry by their one idea, are devoted with absolute singleness of purpose to the pursuit of an honest thing.  Let us consider whom and what we may be found fighting against.  If these subverters do not altogether prove the truth of their own opinions, do they not at least demonstrate the error of those who totally oppose them?  Here is Miss Hurribattle,—­who will not acknowledge her noble contempt for the accidental and the transitory?  I believe that woman desires Truth as earnestly as men desire wealth or reputation!”

“It is so, indeed,” I assented.  “Her large nature will assimilate whatever grandeur of idea may be found among this acid folk.  After a little time she will reproduce in saintly form whatever gives its real vitality to this movement.”

“Never!” said the clergyman; “they will put upon her the strait-jacket of their system, and carry her off to doom.”

Soon after this we went in different ways through the town.

I called upon Mrs. Widesworth, who had a culinary engagement, and could not appear, and then walked to the top of the hill, where a number of the faithful were heaping tar-barrels and shavings about the solitary cider-mill.  Regarding their operations from a little distance stood Deacon Greenlaw; his face wore an expression of grim humor, underlaid by a shrewd intelligence of the true position of affairs.

“They are making lively preparations for your holocaust,” said I.

“Well, ’t isn’t exactly that long word neither,” replied the Deacon.  Fact is, I just looked it out in the dictionary, and there they call it ‘a whole burnt-offering’; but it won’t mean all that with me, I can tell you!”