ry him!"

I thrust under his eyes his last letter to the sub-inspector of the
district. I thought he would get a fit of apoplexy.

"Now, you scoundrel," I said, folding the letter and placing it beyond
reach, "I forgive you all your deception and treason. What Father
Letheby has got in store for you I cannot say. But I'll never forgive
you, you most unscientific and unmathematical artist, for having given
me so many shocking misfits lately, until I have looked like a scarecrow
in a cornfield; even now you are smelling like a distillery. And tell
me, you ruffian, what right had you to say at Mrs. Haley's public house
that I was 'thauto--thauto--gogical' in my preaching? If I, with all the
privileges of senility, chose to repeat myself, to drive the truths of
Christianity into the numskulls of this pre-Adamite village, what is
that to you,--you ninth part of a man? Was it not the immortal Homer
that declared that every tailor--"

"For God's sake, spare me, your reverence, and I'll never do it again."

"Do you promise to cut my garments mathematically in the future?"

"I do, your reverence." He spoke as emphatically as if he were renewing
his baptismal vows at a great mission.

"Do you promise to speak respectfully of me and my sermons for the
future?"

"I do, your reverence."

"Now, go. _Exi, erumpe, evade_, or I'll turn you into a _Sartor
Resartus_. I hand you over now, as the judge hands the culprit, to
Father Letheby. Don't be too much surprised at eventualities. Do you
know, did you ever hear, what the women of Marblehead did to a certain
Floyd Ireson? Well, go ask Father Letheby. He'll tell you. And I shall
be much surprised if the women of Kilronan are much behind their sisters
of Marblehead in dealing with such a scoundrel as you."

* * * * *

I proposed this conundrum to Father Letheby that same evening: "Why is
it considered a greater crime to denounce and correct an evil than to
commit it?" He looked at me as if he doubted my sanity. I put it in a
more euphemistic form: "Why is success always the test of merit? To come
down from the abstract to the concrete, Why is a gigantic swindler a
great financier, and a poor fellow that steals a loaf of bread a felon
and a thief? Why is a colossal liar a great diplomatist, and a petty
prevaricator a base and ignoble fraud? Why is Napoleon a hero, and that
wretched tramp an ever to be dreaded murderer? Why is Bismarck called
great,