“But a harvest-day will come at last
    When the watery winter all is past;
    The waves so gray
    Will be shorn away
    By the angels’ sickles keen and fast;
    And the buried harvest of the sea
    Stored in the barns of eternity.”

Genuine applause followed the good doctor’s song.  I turned to Miss Boulderstone, from whom I had borrowed a piano, and asked her to play a country dance for us.  But first I said—­not getting up on a chair this time:—­

“Some people think it is not proper for a clergyman to dance.  I mean to assert my freedom from any such law.  If our Lord chose to represent, in His parable of the Prodigal Son, the joy in Heaven over a repentant sinner by the figure of ‘music and dancing,’ I will hearken to Him rather than to men, be they as good as they may.”

For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.

And so saying, I stepped up to Jane Rogers, and asked her to dance with me.  She blushed so dreadfully that, for a moment, I was almost sorry I had asked her.  But she put her hand in mine at once; and if she was a little clumsy, she yet danced very naturally, and I had the satisfaction of feeling that I had an honest girl near me, who I knew was friendly to me in her heart.

But to see the faces of the people!  While I had been talking, Old Rogers had been drinking in every word.  To him it was milk and strong meat in one.  But now his face shone with a father’s gratification besides.  And Richard’s face was glowing too.  Even old Brownrigg looked with a curious interest upon us, I thought.

Meantime Dr Duncan was dancing with one of his own patients, old Mrs Trotter, to whose wants he ministered far more from his table than his surgery.  I have known that man, hearing of a case of want from his servant, send the fowl he was about to dine upon, untouched, to those whose necessity was greater than his.

And Mr Boulderstone had taken out old Mrs Rogers; and young Brownrigg had taken Mary Weir.  Thomas Weir did not dance at all, but looked on kindly.

“Why don’t you dance, Old Rogers?” I said, as I placed his daughter in a seat beside him.

“Did your honour ever see an elephant go up the futtock-shrouds?”

“No.  I never did.”

“I thought you must, sir, to ask me why I don’t dance.  You won’t take my fun ill, sir?  I’m an old man-o’-war’s man, you know, sir.”

“I should have thought, Rogers, that you would have known better by this time, than make such an apology to me.”

“God bless you, sir.  An old man’s safe with you—­or a young lass, either, sir,” he added, turning with a smile to his daughter.

I turned, and addressed Mr Boulderstone.

“I am greatly obliged to you, Mr Boulderstone, for the help you have given me this evening.  I’ve seen you talking to everybody, just as if you had to entertain them all.”