a fine fellow, but his
conscience gives him a hard time now and then and works over time for
other People."

"Well," continued the Convener, "McPherson came to me about the matter
in very considerable anxiety. I put him off, consulted with McTavish and
Murray, and we decided that Boyle was too good a man to lose, and as to
his heresy, it was not hurting Windermere as far as we could learn. So
it happened"--here the Convener pulled himself up short to suppress the
chuckle that threatened--"it happened that just as the examination
was beginning McPherson was called out, and before he had returned the
trials for license and ordination had been sustained. I think on the
whole McPherson was relieved, but there were some funny moments after he
came back into court."

"Heresy-hunting doesn't flourish in the West," said the Superintendent.
"There's no time for it. Some of the Eastern Presbyteries have too many
men with more time on their hands than sense in their heads."

"Certainly there was no time lost in this case," replied the Convener.
"We knew Boyle's scholarship was right. We knew his heart was sound. We
knew he was doing good work for us and we knew we wanted him. We were
not anxious to know anything else."

"What we want for the West," said the Superintendent, his voice
vibrating in a deeper tone, "is men who have the spirit of the Gospel
with the power to preach it and the love of their fellowmen, with tact
to bring it to bear upon them. A little heresy, more or less, won't hurt
them. Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy the other fellow's."

"In Boyle's case, I believe he was helped by his touch of heresy. It
gave him a kind of brotherly feeling with all heretics. It was that more
than anything else that broke up the Freethinkers' Club."

"Ah," said the Superintendent, bending eagerly forward, again on the
scent, "I didn't hear that."

"Yes," said the Convener, "Fink told me about it. Boyle went to
their meetings. He found them revelling in cheap scepticism of the
Ingersollian type. He took the attitude of a man seeking after a working
theory of life, and that attitude he stuck to--his real attitude, mind
you. He encouraged them to talk, combated none of their positions and,
as Hank said, 'coaxed them out into deep water and had them froggin' for
their lives. He was the biggest Freethinker in the bunch.' They invited
him to give a series of lectures. He did so, and that settled the
Freethinkers' Club. He never