led to drinking. Valentine respected him, was sure the
scent of a cigar was still very pleasant to his nostrils, and knew he
could well have afforded to smoke himself. That was one reason why he
let himself be persuaded in the matter of the site (people never are
persuaded by any reason worth, mentioning). Another reason was, that Mr.
Craik had become a teetotaller, "for you know, old fellow, that gives
me such a _pull_ in persuading the drunkards;" a third reason was, that
there was a bit of land in the middle of the village, just the thing for
a site, and worth nothing, covered with stones and thistles. Mr. Craik
said he should have such a much better congregation, he felt sure, if
the church was not in such an extremely inconvenient out-of-the-way
place; that aged saint, who was gone, had often regretted the
inconvenience for the people.

Valentine at last gave him the site. Mr. Craik remarked on what a
comfort it would have been to the aged saint if she could have known
what a good churchman her heir would prove himself.

But Valentine was not at all what Mr. Craik meant by a good churchman.
Such religious opinions and feelings as had influence over him, had come
from the evangelical school. His old father and uncle had been very
religious men, and of that type, almost as a matter of course. In their
early day evangelical religion had been as the river of God--the one
channel in which higher thought and fervent feeling ran.

Valentine had respected their religion, had seen that it was real, that
it made them contented, happy, able to face death with something more
than hope, able to acquiesce in the wonderful reservations of God with
men, the more able on account of them to look on this life as the
childhood of the next, and to wait for knowledge patiently. But yet, of
all the forms taken by religious feeling, Valentine considered it the
most inconvenient; of all the views of Christianity, the most difficult
to satisfy.

He told the vicar he did not see why his grandmother was to be called a
saint because she had gone through great misfortunes, and because it had
pleased her to be _trundled_ to church, on all Sundays and saints' days,
besides attending to the other ordinances of the church and the
sacraments.

When he was mildly admonished that a site seemed to presuppose a
church, he assented, and with one great plunge, during which he
distinctly felt, both that his position as landlord was not to be
defende