he pig-headed narrow-minded set. How he comes to be a parson I can't
make out."

"Well, you see, from their point of view it is the best thing to be; I
mean he gets plenty of scope for work. I fancy he feels as much obliged
to speak and teach as father does."

"Pity he's not on our side," said Tom; "they say he's a first-rate
speaker. But I'm afraid he is perfectly crazy on that point; he'll
never come over."

"I don't think we've a right to put the whole of his religiousness down
to a mania," said Erica. "Besides, he is not the sort of man to be even
a little mad, there's nothing the least fanatical about him."

"Call it delusion if you like it better. What's in a name? The thing
remains the same. A man can't believe what is utterly against reason
without becoming, as far as that particular belief is concerned,
unreasonable, beyond the pale of reason, therefore deluded, therefore
mad."

Erica looked perplexed; she did not think Tom's logic altogether good,
but she could not correct it. There was, however, a want of generosity
about the assertion which instantly appealed to her fine sense of honor.

"I can't argue it out," she said at last, "but it doesn't seem to me
fair to put down what we can't understand in other people to madness; it
never seemed to me quite fair for Festus to accuse Paul of madness when
he really had made a splendid defense, and it doesn't seem fair that you
should accuse Mr. Osmond of being mad."

"Only on that one point," said Tom. "Just a little touched, you know.
How else can you account for a man like that believing what he professes
to believe?"

"I don't know," said Erica, relapsing into perplexed silence.

"Besides," continued Tom, "you cry out because I say they must be just a
little touched, but they accuse us of something far worse than madness,
they accuse us of absolute wickedness."

"Not all of them," said Erica.

"The greater part," said Tom. "How often do you think the chieftain
meets with really fair treatment from the antagonists?"

Erica had nothing to say to this. The harshness and intolerance which
her father had constantly to encounter was the great grief of her life,
the perpetual source of indignation, her strongest argument against
Christianity.

"Have you much to do tonight?" she asked, not anxious to stir up afresh
the revolt against the world's injustice which the merest touch would
set working within her. "I was thinking that, if there was time to
spar