“I assure you, I think very differently.”

“I daresay you do.”

“But neither your opinion nor mine has anything to do with the matter.”

Here I turned to Miss Oldcastle and went on—­

“It is a chance which seldom occurs in one’s life, Miss Oldcastle—­a chance of setting wrong right by a word; and as a minister of the gospel of truth and love, I beg you to assist me with your presence to that end.”

I would have spoken more strongly, but I knew that her word given to me would be enough without her presence.  At the same time, I felt not only that there would be a propriety in her taking a personal interest in the matter, but that it would do her good, and tend to create a favour towards each other in some of my flock between whom at present there seemed to be nothing in common.

But at my last words, Mrs Oldcastle rose to her feet no longer red—­now whiter than her usual whiteness with passion.

“You dare to persist!  You take advantage of your profession to persist in dragging my daughter into a vile dispute between mechanics of the lowest class—­against the positive command of her only parent!  Have you no respect for her position in society?—­for her sex?  Mister Walton, you act in a manner unworthy of your cloth.”

I had stood looking in her eyes with as much self-possession as I could muster.  And I believe I should have borne it all quietly, but for that last word.

If there is one epithet I hate more than another, it is that execrable word cloth—­used for the office of a clergyman.  I have no time to set forth its offence now.  If my reader cannot feel it, I do not care to make him feel it.  Only I am sorry to say it overcame my temper.

“Madam,” I said, “I owe nothing to my tailor.  But I owe God my whole being, and my neighbour all I can do for him.  ’He that loveth not his brother is a murderer,’ or murderess, as the case may be.”

At that word murderess, her face became livid, and she turned away without reply.  By this time her daughter was half way to the house.  She followed her.  And here was I left to go home, with the full knowledge that, partly from trying to gain too much, and partly from losing my temper, I had at best but a mangled and unsatisfactory testimony to carry back to Thomas Weir.  Of course I walked away—­round the end of the house and down the avenue; and the farther I went the more mortified I grew.  It was not merely the shame of losing my temper, though that was a shame—­and with a woman too, merely because she used a common epithet!—­but I saw that it must appear very strange to the carpenter that I was not able to give a more explicit account of some sort, what I had learned not being in the least decisive in the matter.  It only amounted to this, that Mrs and Miss Oldcastle were in the shop on the very day on which Weir was dismissed.  It proved that so much of what he had told me was