Alone, it is true, he would hardly have made money, but he would have got through, and would have left his daughter the means of getting through also; for he would have left her in possession of her own peace and the confidence of her friends, which will always prove enough for those who confess themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth--those who regard it as a grand staircase they have to climb, not a plain on which to build their houses and plant their vineyards.
As to the peculiar doctrines of the sect to which he had joined himself, right or wrong in themselves, Marston, after having complied with what seemed to him the letter of the law concerning baptism, gave himself no further trouble.

He had for a long time known--for, by the power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and little church, gather only the husks and chaff--that the only baptism of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of him a living soul.

When a man _knows_ this, potentially he knows all things.

But, _just therefore_, he did not stand high with his sect any more than with his customers, though--a fact which Marston himself never suspected--the influence of his position had made them choose him for a deacon.

One evening George had had leave to go home early, because of a party at _the villa_, as the Turnbulls always called their house; and, the boy having also for some cause got leave of absence, Mr.Marston was left to shut the shop himself, Mary, who was in some respects the stronger of the two, assisting him.