Thatcher was far from being a saint, but, like many other cheerful sinners in our capital, he had gone to church in the days when Ware occupied the First Congregational pulpit.

A good many years had passed since Ware had been a captain of cavalry, chasing Stuart's boys in the Valley of Virginia, but he was still a capital wing shot.

A house-boat is the best place in the world for talk, and the talk in Thatcher's boat, around the sheet-iron stove, was good those crisp November evenings.
On Sunday Ware tramped off to a country church, taking his companions with him.

It was too bad to miss the ducks, he said, but a day's peace in the marshes gave them a chance to accumulate.

That evening he talked of Emerson, with whom he had spoken face to face in Concord in that whitest of houses.