On his rounds--for he let nothing interfere with his work--heavy farmers in dog-carts, who opposed him at vestry meetings, stopped to ask after Regie.

The most sullen of his parishioners touched their hats to him as he passed, and mothers of families, who never could be induced to leave their cooking to attend morning service, and were deeply offended at being called "after-dinner Christians" in consequence, forgot the opprobrious term, and brought little offerings of new-laid eggs and rosy apples to tempt "the little master." Mr.Gresley was touched, grateful.
"I don't think I have always done them justice," he actually said to Hester one day.

"They do seem to understand me a little better at last.
Walsh has never spoken to me since my sermon on Dissent, though I always make a point of being friendly to him, but to-day he stopped, and said he knew what trouble was, and how he had lost"-- Mr.Gresley's voice faltered, "it is a long time ago--but how, when he was about my age, he lost his eldest boy, and how he always remembered Regie in his prayers, and I must keep up a good heart.

We shook hands," said Mr.Gresley.

"I sometimes think Walsh means well, and that he may be a good-hearted man, after all." Beneath the arrogance which a belief in Apostolic succession seems to induce in natures like Mr.Gresley's, as mountain air induces asthma in certain lungs, the shaft of agonized anxiety had pierced to a thin layer of humility.