s training with his
choir for a sacred concert. There was a boyish streak in him, too. He
would enter into the joys of the annual Sunday-school picnic with a
zest equal to the children's own, leading the way, in shirt-sleeves, at
leap-frog and obstacle-race. In doctrine he struck a happy mean between
low-church practices and ritualism, preaching short, spirited sermons
to which even languid Christians could listen without tedium; and on a
week-day evening he would take a hand at a rubber of whist or
ecarte--and not for love--or play a sound game of chess. A man, too,
who, refusing to be bound by the letter of the Thirty-nine Articles,
extended his charity even to persons of the Popish faith. In short, he
was one of the few to whom Mahony could speak of his own haphazard
efforts at criticising the Pentateuch.

The Archdeacon was wont to respond with his genial smile: "Ah, it's all
very well for you, doctor!--you're a free lance. I am constrained by my
cloth.--And frankly, for the rest of us, that kind of thing's
too--well, too disturbing. Especially when we have nothing better to
put in its place."

Doctor and parson--the latter, considerably over six feet, made Mahony,
who was tall enough, look short and doubly slender--walked side by side
for nearly a mile, flitting from topic to topic: the rivalry that
prevailed between Ballarats East and West; the seditious uprising in
India, where both had relatives; the recent rains, the prospects for
grazing. The last theme brought them round to Dandaloo and its unhappy
owner. The Archdeacon expressed the outsider's surprise at the strength
of Glendinning's constitution, and the lively popular sympathy that was
felt for his wife.

"One's heart aches for the poor little lady, struggling to bear up as
though nothing were the matter. Between ourselves, doctor"--and Mr.
Long took off his straw hat to let the air play round his
head--"between ourselves, it's a thousand pities he doesn't just pop
off the hooks in one of his bouts. Or that some of you medical
gentlemen don't use your knowledge to help things on."

He let out his great hearty laugh as he spoke, and his companion's
involuntary stiffening went unnoticed. But on Mahony voicing his
attitude with: "And his immortal soul, sir? Isn't it the church's duty
to hope for a miracle? ... just as it is ours to keep the vital spark
going," he made haste to take the edge off his words. "Now, now,
doctor, only my fun! Our duty is, I t