een produced on her mind by the recent occurrence
or by any other cause.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.

"I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself," he said.

The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his
usual professional tone,

"Put out your tongue."

The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak
character,--for people differ as much in their mode of performing this
trifling act as Gideon's soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook.
The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.

"It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily," said the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather.

"Is your appetite as good as usual?" the Doctor asked.

"Pretty good," the minister answered; "but my sleep, my sleep, Doctor,--I
am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of my future,
I am not at ease in mind."

He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved
his chair up close to the Doctor's.

"You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the last
few months."

"I think I do," the old Doctor said. "You want to get out of the new
church into the old one, don't you?"

The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very
quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret. As the old Doctor was
his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody's confidant in trouble,
he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of
sentiments through which he had been passing. He was too late with his
information, it appeared, and there was nothing to be done but to throw
himself on the Doctor's good sense and kindness, which everybody knew,
and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he should
pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,

"You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to
the true church, would you?"

"Have you stay, my friend?" said the Doctor, with a pleasant, friendly
look,--"have you stay? Not a month, nor a week, nor a day, if I could
help it. You have got into the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from
the first. The sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I'm very
glad you don't mean to stop half-way. Don't you know you've always come
to me when you've been dyspeptic or sick anyhow, and wanted to put
yourself wholly into my hands, so that I might order