n't comin'," he told me. "There ain't no gal that can teach me
nothin'."

"Perhaps you are wrong, Captain Sears," I replied. "I might teach you
something."

"What?" demanded the captain, with chilling distrust.

"Oh," I said, cheerfully, "let us say tolerance, for one thing."

"Humph!" muttered the old man. "The Lord don't want none of your
tolerance, and neither do I."

I laughed. "He doesn't object to tolerance," I said. "Come to church.
You can talk, too; and the Lord will listen to us both."

To my surprise, the captain came the following Sunday, and during
the seven years I remained in the church he was one of my strongest
supporters and friends. I needed friends, for my second battle was not
slow in following my first. There was, indeed, barely time between in
which to care for the wounded.

We had in East Dennis what was known as the "Free Religious Group," and
when some of the members of my congregation were not wrangling among
themselves, they were usually locking horns with this group. For years,
I was told, one of the prime diversions of the "Free Religious" faction
was to have a dance in our town hall on the night when we were using
it for our annual church fair. The rules of the church positively
prohibited dancing, so the worldly group took peculiar pleasure in
attending the fair, and during the evening in getting up a dance and
whirling about among us, to the horror of our members. Then they spent
the remainder of the year boasting of the achievement. It came to my
ears that they had decided to follow this pleasing programme at our
Christmas church celebration, so I called the church trustees together
and put the situation to them.

"We must either enforce our discipline," I said, "or give it up.
Personally I do not object to dancing, but, as the church has ruled
against it, I intend to uphold the church. To allow these people to make
us ridiculous year after year is impossible. Let us either tell them
that they may dance or that they may not dance; but whatever we tell
them, let us make them obey our ruling."

The trustees were shocked at the mere suggestion of letting them dance.

"Very well," I ended. "Then they shall not dance. That is understood."

Captain Crowell, the father of my dead friend Mrs. Addy, and himself
my best man friend, was a strong supporter of the Free Religious Group.
When its members raced to him with the news that I had said they could
not dance at the church's Chris