-house. Such a crowd of worshippers, swarming into the pews
like bees, filling all the aisles, running over at the door like berries
heaped too full in the measure,--some kneeling on the steps, some
standing on the sidewalk, hats off, heads down, lips moving, some looking
on devoutly from the other side of the street! Oh, could he have
followed his own Bridget, maid of all work, into the heart of that
steaming throng, and bowed his head while the priests intoned their Latin
prayers! could he have snuffed up the cloud of frankincense, and felt
that he was in the great ark which holds the better half of the Christian
world, while all around it are wretched creatures, some struggling
against the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, and
some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride out the flood
which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, upon their own private,
individual life-preservers!

Such was the present state of mind of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather,
when his clerical brother called upon him to talk over the questions to
which old Sophy had called his attention.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.

For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on in
Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the records
of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers. The more he
read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon which he and
his people were standing. They and he were clearly in a minority, and
his deep inward longing to be with the majority was growing into an
engrossing passion. He yearned especially towards the good old
unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of faith
which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her traditional
forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants and anodynes.

About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under the
loose papers. He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He ordered his new coat to be
cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began
an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O'Brien, the
young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid of
all work. These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in
with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rock