“Really, Miss Vancourt, I don’t think I need utter any special formula on this occasion,” he said, gaily.  “You have done a good action to the whole community by dismissing Leach.  Good actions bring their own reward, while curses, like chickens, come home to roost.  Pray forgive me for quoting copybook maxims!  But, for the curse of one ill-conditioned boor, you will have the thanks and blessings of all your tenantry.  That will take the edge of the malediction; don’t you think so?”

She turned her mare in the homeward direction, and began to guide it gently down the slope.  Walking by her side, John held back one of the vast leafy boughs of the great trees to allow her to pass more easily, and glanced up at her smilingly as he put his question.

She met his eyes with an open frankness that somewhat disconcerted him.

“Well, I don’t know about that!” she replied.  “You see, in these days of telepathy and hypnotic suggestion, there may be something very catching about a curse.  It’s just like a little seed of disease;—­if it falls on the right soil it germinates and spreads, and then all manner of wicked souls get the infection.  I believe that in the old days everybody guessed this instinctively, without being able to express it scientifically,—­and that’s why they ran to the Church for protection agaiast curses, and the evil eye, and things of that sort.  See how some of the old Scottish curses cling even to this day!  The only way to take the sting out of a curse is to get it transposed”—­and she smiled, glancing meditatively up into the brightening blue of the sky.  “Like a song, you know!  If it’s too low for the voice you transpose it to a higher key.  I daresay the Church was able to do that in the days when it had real faith—­oh!—­ I beg your pardon!—­I ought not to say that to a man of your calling.”

“Why not?” said Walden; “Pray say anything you like to me, Miss Vancourt;—­I should be a very poor and unsatisfactory sort of creature if I could not bear any criticism on my vocation.  Besides, I quite agree with you.  The early Church had certainly more faith than it has now.”

“You’re not a bit like a parson,” said Maryllia gravely, studying his face with embarrassing candour and closeness; “You look quite a nice pleasant sort of man.”

John Walden laughed again,—­this time with sincere heartiness.  Maryllia’s eyes twinkled, and little dimples came and went round her mouth and chin.

“You seem amused at that,” she said; “But I’ve seen a great deal of life—­and I have met heaps and heaps of parsons—­parsons young and parsons old—­and they were all horrid, simply horrid!  Some talked Bible—­and others talked the Sporting Times—­any amount of them talked the drama, and played villains in private theatricals.  I never met but one real minister,—­that is a man who ministers to the poor,—­and he died in a London slum before he was thirty.  I believe he was a saint; and if he had lived in the days of the early Church, he would certainly have been canonised.  He would have been Saint William—­his name was William.  But he was only one William,—­I’ve seen hundreds of them.”