It was a strange thing to hear them talk with unrestrained tenderness to
one another of their boy, and an icy barrier between themselves all the
time.

Eight years had now passed thus, and Gerard, fairly compared with men in
general, was happy.

But Margaret was not.

The habitual expression of her face was a sweet pensiveness, but
sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped
Gerard now and then. And when she went to see him, if a monk was with
him she would turn her back and go home. She hated the monks for having
parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated her boy with a contempt for
them which lasted him till his dying day.

Gerard bore with her like an angel. He knew her heart of gold, and hoped
this ill gust would blow over.

He himself being now the right man in the right place this many years,
loving his parishioners, and beloved by them, and occupied from morn
till night in good works, recovered the natural cheerfulness of his
disposition. To tell the truth, a part of his jocoseness was a blind; he
was the greatest peace-maker, except Mr. Harmony in the play, that ever
was born. He reconciled more enemies in ten years than his predecessors
had done in three hundred; and one of his manoeuvres in the peacemaking
art was to make the quarrellers laugh at the cause of quarrel. So did
he undermine the demon of discord. But independently of that, he really
loved a harmless joke. He was a wonderful tamer of animals, squirrels,
bares, fawns, etc. So half in jest a parishioner who had a mule supposed
to be possessed with a devil gave it him and said, "Tame this vagabone,
parson, if ye can." Well, in about six months, Heaven knows how, he
not only tamed Jack, but won his affections to such a degree, that Jack
would come running to his whistle like a dog.

One day, having taken shelter from a shower on the stone settle outside
a certain public-house, he heard a toper inside, a stranger, boasting he
could take more at a draught than any man in Gouda. He instantly marched
in and said, "What, lads, do none of ye take him up for the honour of
Gouda? Shall it be said that there came hither one from another parish a
greater sot than any of us? Nay, then, I your parson do take him up.
Go to, I'll find thee a parishioner shall drink more at a draught than
thou."

A bet was made; Gerard whistled; in clattered Jack--for he was taught
to come into a room with the utmost composure--and put his nose into hi