r and expression, and his manners showed the gentleman.

"Some years ago," thought Horace, "I would have studied his person for
indications of hoofs and horns--so strangely was I brought up. He is
just a poor fellow like myself--it is as great a mistake to make these
men demi-gods as to make them demi-devils--and he denies himself a wife
as a Prohibitionist denies himself a drink. He goes through his
mummeries as honestly as a parson through his sermons or a dervish
through his dances--it's all one, and we must allow for it in the
make-up of human nature. One man has his parson, another his priest, a
third his dervish--and I have Sonia."

This satisfactory conclusion he dwelt upon lovingly, unconscious that
the Monsignor was now observing him in turn.

"A fine boy," the priest thought, "with _man_ written all over him.
Honest face, virtuous expression, daring too, loving-hearted, lovable,
clever, I'm sure, and his life has been too easy to develop any marked
character. Too young to have been in the war, but you may be sure he
wanted to go, and his mother had to exercise her authority to keep him
at home. He has been enjoying me for an hour.... I'm as pleasant as a
puzzle to him ... he preferred to read me rather than Dickens, and I
gather from his expression that he has solved me. By this time I am
rated in his mind as an impostor. Oh, the children of the Mayflower, how
hard for them to see anything in life except through the portholes of
that ship."

With a sigh the priest returned to his book, and the two gentlemen,
having had their fill of speculation, forgot each other directly and
forever. At this point the accident occurred. The slow train ran into a
train ahead, which should have been farther on at that moment. All the
passengers rose up suddenly, without any ceremony, quite speechless, and
flew up the car like sparrows. Then the car turned on its left side, and
Horace rolled into the outstretched arms and elevated legs of Monsignor
O'Donnell. He was kicked and embraced at the same moment, receiving
these attentions in speechless awe, as he could not recall who was to
blame for the introduction and the attitude. For a moment he reasoned
that they had become the object of most outrageous ridicule from the
other passengers; for these latter had suddenly set up a shouting and
screeching very scandalous. Horace wondered if the priest would help him
to resent this storm of insult, and he raised himself off the
Mon