ount would have allowed one of the common people to impugn the
spiritual authorities unrebuked: her own private judgment on doctrine
was another matter.

"'Between him and thee,' yes," said Mrs. Christie, who on some points
was as sensitive and acute as a well-born woman. "But it is taking a
mean advantage of a man to talk at him when he can't answer; that's what
my William says. For if he spoke up for himself, they'd call it brawling
in church, and turn him out. He ain't liked, Miss Wort; you can't say he
is, to tell truth. Not many of the gentlemen does attend church, except
them as goes for the look o' the thing, like the old admiral and a few
more."

Miss Wort groaned audibly, then cheered up, and with a gush of feeling
assured her humble friend that it would not be so in a better world;
_there_ all would be love and perfect harmony. And so she went on her
farther way. Mr. Carnegie and Bessie Fairfax, riding slowly, were still
in sight. The next visit Miss Wort had proposed to pay was to a scene of
genuine distress, and she saw with regret that the doctor would
forestall her. He dismounted and entered a cottage by the roadside, and
when she reached it the door was shut, Brownie's bridle hung on the
paling, and Bessie was letting Miss Hoyden crop the sweet grass on the
bank while she waited. Miss Wort determined to stay for the doctor's
exit; she had remedies in her pocket for this case also.

Within the cottage there was a good-looking, motherly woman, and a
large-framed young man of nineteen or twenty who sat beside the fire
with a ghastly face, and hands hanging down in dark despondency. He had
the aspect of one rising from a terrible illness; in fact, he had just
come out of prison after a month's hard labor.

"It is his mind that's worst hurt, sir," said his mother, lifting her
eyes full of tears to Mr. Carnegie's kind face. "But he has a sore pain
in his chest, too, that he never used to have."

"Stand up, Tom, and let me have a look at you," said the doctor, and Tom
stood up, grim as death, starved, shamed, unutterably miserable.

"Mr. Wiley's been in, but all he had to say was as he hoped Tom would
keep straight now, since he'd found out by unhappy experience as the way
of transgressors is hard," the poor woman told her visitor, breaking
into a sob as she spoke.

Mr. Carnegie considered the lad, and told him to sit down again, then
turned to the window. His eye lit on Miss Wort Standing outside with
d