did not observe that the door by which he entered led to the women's
pews. Being by nature a modest man, he cast down his eyes on entering,
and did not again raise them until he found himself seated beside a
Norwegian female in a black gown and a white head-dress, with a baby in
her arms, which also wore a black gown and a white head-dress. Bob sat
with a solemn look on his bluff visage, and wiped his bald forehead
gently for some time ere he discovered that he was the only male being
in the midst of a crowd of two hundred women and girls and female
infants!

On making this discovery honest Bob's body became exceedingly warm and
his face uncommonly red. He glanced round uneasily, blew his nose, rose
suddenly, and, putting on his hat with the back to the front, went out
of the church on tip-toe as quietly as possible, and was not again seen,
until, an hour afterwards, he was discovered seated on the sunny side of
a rock near the boat calmly smoking his pipe!

Bob was somewhat ashamed of this little adventure, and did not like to
have it spoken of. As a matter of course his comrades did not spare
him; but, being the steward of the ship, and having supreme command over
the food, he so contrived to punish his messmates that they very soon
gave up joking him about his going to church with the Norse girls!

It cannot be said that any of the three friends made much of the sermon
that day. Fred understood only a sentence here and there, Grant
understood only a word now and then, and Sam Sorrel understood nothing
at all; but from the earnestness of the preacher, especially when the
name of our Saviour was mentioned, they were inclined to believe that a
good work was going on there.

In this opinion they were further strengthened when, on afterwards
visiting the pastor, they found him to be a man of singularly kind and
earnest disposition, with agreeable and unaffected manners. He wore a
long loose robe of black material, and a thick white frill round his
neck similar to that usually seen in the portraits of the great Reformer
Martin Luther.

His family consisted of a wife and four children--a sturdy boy, and
three flaxen-haired girls, all of whom vied with each other in paying
attention to their visitors. Coffee was instantly produced, and cakes
made by the fair fingers of the goodwife. The pastor could speak a
little French, so that his visitors were able to converse with him, but
the other members of the family c