e it," said Mr. Newberry, shaking his head; "and I'm
sorry for Fareforth Furlong. An excellent fellow, Fyshe, excellent. I
keep wondering Sunday after Sunday, if there isn't something I can do
to help him out. One might do something further, perhaps, in the way of
new buildings or alterations. I have, in fact, offered--by myself, I
mean, and without other aid--to dynamite out the front of his church,
underpin it, and put him in a Norman gateway; either that, or blast out
the back of it where the choir sit, just as he likes. I was thinking
about it last Sunday as they were singing the anthem, and realizing
what a lot one might do there with a few sticks of dynamite."

"I doubt it," said Mr. Fyshe. "In fact, Newberry, to speak very
frankly, I begin to ask myself, Is Furlong the man for the post?"

"Oh, surely," said Mr. Newberry in protest.

"Personally a charming fellow," went on Mr. Fyshe; "but is he, all said
and done, quite the man to conduct a church? In the _first_ place, he
is _not_ a businessman."

"No," said Mr. Newberry reluctantly, "that I admit."

"Very good. And, _secondly_, even in the matter of his religion itself,
one always feels as if he were too little fixed, too unstable. He
simply moves with the times. That, at least, is what people are
beginning to say of him, that he is perpetually moving with the times.
It doesn't do, Newberry, it doesn't do." Whereupon Mr. Newberry went
away troubled and wrote to Fareforth Furlong a confidential letter with
a signed cheque in it for the amount of Mr. Fyshe's interest, and with
such further offerings of dynamite, of underpinning and blasting as his
conscience prompted.

When the rector received and read the note and saw the figures of the
cheque, there arose such a thankfulness in his spirit as he hadn't felt
for months, and he may well have murmured, for the repose of Mr.
Newberry's soul, a prayer not found in the rubric of King James.

All the more cause had he to feel light at heart, for as it chanced, it
was on that same evening that the Dumfarthings, father and daughter,
were to take tea at the rectory. Indeed, a few minutes before six
o'clock they might have been seen making their way from the manse to
the rectory.

On their way along the avenue the minister took occasion to reprove his
daughter for the worldliness of her hat (it was a little trifle from
New York that she had bought out of the Sunday School money--a
temporary loan); and a little furt