eedom of speech. He knew him to be honest, kind,
charitable, self-denying, wherever any sorrow was to be alleviated,
always reverential, with a cheerful trust in the great Father of all
mankind. To be sure, his senior deacon, old Deacon Shearer,--who seemed
to have got his Scripture-teachings out of the "Vinegar Bible," (the one
where Vineyard is misprinted Vinegar; which a good many people seem to
have adopted as the true reading,)--his senior deacon had called Dr.
Kittredge an "infidel." But the Reverend Doctor could not help feeling,
that, unless the text, "By their fruits ye shall know them," were an
interpolation, the Doctor was the better Christian of the two. Whatever
his senior deacon might think about it, he said to himself that he
shouldn't be surprised if he met the Doctor in heaven yet, inquiring
anxiously after old Deacon Shearer.

He was on the point of expressing himself very frankly to the Doctor,
with that benevolent smile on his face which had sometimes come near
giving offence to the readers of the "Vinegar" edition, but he saw that
the physician's attention had been arrested by Elsie. He looked in the
same direction himself, and could not help being struck by her attitude
and expression. There was something singularly graceful in the curves of
her neck and the rest of her figure, but she was so perfectly still that
it seemed as if she were hardly breathing. Her eyes were fixed on the
young girl with whom Mr. Bernard was talking. He had often noticed their
brilliancy, but now it seemed to him that they appeared dull, and the
look on her features was as of some passion which had missed its stroke.
Mr. Bernard's companion seemed unconscious that she was the object
of this attention, and was listening to the young master as if he had
succeeded in making himself very agreeable.

Of course Dick Veneer had not mistaken the game that was going on. The
schoolmaster meant to make Elsie jealous,--and he had done it. That 's
it: get her savage first, and then come wheedling round her,--a sure
trick, if he isn't headed off somehow. But Dick saw well enough that he
had better let Elsie alone just now, and thought the best way of killing
the evening would be to amuse himself in a little lively talk with
Mrs. Blanche Creamer, and incidentally to show Elsie that he could make
himself acceptable to other women, if not to herself.

The Doctor presently went up to Elsie, determined to engage her in
conversation and ge