But he was human to the core,--and, at any rate, unselfish.

That there might be another danger was a fact that he looked full in the face.

But what victory can be won without danger?
And he thought that he knew this girl, who three times a year would open her whole heart to him in confession.

He was sure that she was not only innocent, but good.

And of the man, too, he was prone to believe good;--though who on such a question ever trusts a man's goodness?
There might be danger and there must be discretion; but surely it would not be wise, because evil was possible, that such a one as Kate O'Hara should be kept from all that intercourse without which a woman is only half a woman! He had considered it all, though the reader may perhaps think that as a minister of the gospel he had come to a strange conclusion.