ate Miss Hester, for
it was constantly impressed upon him that all was being done for his
good, and the word "duty" was burned like a fiery cross upon his heart
and brain.

There is a bit of the pagan in every natural boy, and to give him too
much to reverence taxes his powers until they are worn and impotent by
the time he reaches manhood. Under Miss Hester's tutelage too many
things became sacred to Fred Brent. It was wicked to cough in church, as
it was a sacrilege to play with a hymn-book. His training was the
apotheosis of the non-essential. But, after all, there is no rebel like
Nature. She is an iconoclast.

When he was less than ten years old, an incident occurred that will in a
measure indicate the manner of his treatment. Miss Prime's prescription
for making a good boy was two parts punishment, two parts admonition,
and six parts prayer. Accordingly, as the watchful and sympathetic
neighbours said, "she an' that pore child fairly lived in church."

It was one class-meeting night, and, as usual, the boy and his guardian
were sitting side by side at church. It was the habit of some of the
congregation to bring their outside controversies into the class-room
under the guise of testimonies or exhortations, and there to air their
views where their opponents could not answer them. One such was Daniel
Hastings. The trait had so developed in him that whenever he rose to
speak, the question ran around, "I wonder who Dan'l 's a-goin' to rake
over the coals now." On this day he had been having a tilt with his
old-time enemy, Thomas Donaldson, over the advent into Dexter of a young
homoeopathic doctor. With characteristic stubbornness, Dan'l had held
that there was no good in any but the old-school medical men, and he
sneered at the idea of anybody's being cured with sugar, as he
contemptuously termed the pellets and powders affected by the new
school. Thomas, who was considered something of a wit and who sustained
his reputation by the perpetration of certain time-worn puns, had
replied that other hogs were sugar-cured, and why not Dan'l? This had
turned the laugh on Hastings, and he went home from the corner grocery,
where the men were congregated, in high dudgeon.

Still smarting with the memory of his defeat, when he rose to speak
that evening, he cast a glance full of unfriendly significance at his
opponent and launched into a fiery exhortation on true religion. "Some
folks' religion," he said, "is like sugar, al