!" thought Dr. Upround; "how feebly and
incapably I must have put it! If you ever come again, you shall have my
Ahab sermon."

But the clergyman was still more astonished a very few minutes
afterward. For, as he passed out of the church-yard gate, receiving,
with his wife and daughter, the kindly salute of the parish, the same
tall stranger stood before him, with a face as hard as a statue's, and,
making a short, quick flourish with his hat, begged for the honor of
shaking his hand.

"Sir, it is to thank you for the very finest sermon I ever had the
privilege of hearing. My name is Mordacks, and I flatter nobody--except
myself--that I know a good thing when I get it."

"Sir, I am obliged to you," said Dr. Upround, stiffly, and not without
suspicion of being bantered, so dry was the stranger's countenance, and
his manner so peculiar; "and if I have been enabled to say a good word
in season, and its season lasts, it will be a source of satisfaction to
me."

"Yes, I fear there are many smugglers here. But I am no revenue
officer, as your congregation seemed to think. May I call upon business
to-morrow, sir? Thank you; then may I say ten o'clock--your time of
beginning, as I hear? Mordacks is my name, sir, of York city, not
unfavorably known there. Ladies, my duty to you!"

"What an extraordinary man, my dear!" Mrs. Upround exclaimed, with some
ingratitude, after the beautiful bow she had received. "He may talk as
he likes, but he must be a smuggler. He said that he was not an officer;
that shows it, for they always run into the opposite extreme. You
have converted him, my dear; and I am sure that we ought to be so much
obliged to him. If he comes to-morrow morning to give up all his lace,
do try to remember how my little all has been ruined in the wash, and I
am sick of working at it."

"My dear, he is no smuggler. I begin to recollect. He was down here in
the summer, and I made a great mistake. I took him for Rideout; and I
did the same to-day. When I see him to-morrow, I shall beg his pardon.
One gets so hurried in the vestry always; they are so impatient with
their fiddles! A great deal of it was Janetta's fault."

"It always is my fault, papa, somehow or other," the young lady
answered, with a faultless smile: and so they went home to the early
Sunday dinner.

"Papa, I am in such a state of excitement; I am quite unfit to go to
church this afternoon," Miss Upround exclaimed, as they set forth again.
"You may