d set your heart on Miss Campion's
becoming a nun?"

"God forbid!" I said fervently. "We don't want to see all our best girls
running into convents. I had set my heart on her being married to some
good, excellent Catholic Irishman, like the Chief over at Kilkeel."

"Neil Cullen? Campion wouldn't listen to it. His name is a red rag to a
bull. He never forgave Cullen for not firing on the people at that
eviction over at Labbawally, some two or three years ago."

"And what does the person most interested think of the matter?" I asked.

"Well, I think she is quite in favor of it," he said. "Her father likes
him, he will live in the old house, and she likes him,--at least, she
asked me to do all in my power to bring him into the Church."

"The little puss," I could not help saying. "Who would ever have thought
it? And yet, would it not be best? I pity her living with that old
sea-dog,--that Viking in everything but his black mane of hair. But now,
look here; this matter is important; let us talk it over quietly. Who or
what is Ormsby? You have met him?"

"Several times. He is a young Trinity man, good-looking, gentlemanly,
correct, moral. He has a pension of two hundred a year, his salary as
Inspector of Coast Guards, and great expectations. But he has no faith."

"And never had any, I suppose. That's the way with all these fellows--"

"On the contrary, he was brought up a strict Evangelical, almost a
Calvinist. Then he began to read, and like so many others he has drifted
into unfaith."

"Well, lend him some books. He knows nothing, of course, about us. Let
him see the faith, and he'll embrace it."

"Unfortunately, there's the rub. He has read everything. He has
travelled the world; and reversing the venerable maxim, _Coelum, non
animum mutant_, he has taken his faith from his climate. He has been a
Theosophist in London, a 'New Light' in 'Frisco, as he calls it, a
Moslem in Cairo (by the way, he thinks a lot of these Mussulmans,--fine,
manly, dignified fellows, he says, whose eloquence would bring a blush
almost to the cheek of a member of Parliament). Then he has been hand in
glove with Buddhist priests in the forests of Ceylon, and has been
awfully impressed with their secret power, and still more with their
calm philosophy. I believe," said my curate, sinking his voice to a
whisper of awe and mystery, "_I believe--he has
kissed--the--tooth--of--Buddha!_"

"Indeed," I replied, "and what good did that operatio