leming. She could
not bring herself to speak of his losses while he remained silent, but
she was all the more bitter in speaking of the old man's obstinacy.

"And there are people who call him a sincere and exemplary Christian!
The hard, selfish, sour old man!"

"Well," said Jacob, after a pause of consideration, "I guess he is a
Christian--as Christians go. There are few Christians who live up to
their light in all respects, I'm afraid."

"That's so; but then there is a difference between failings and
shortcomings, or even open yieldings to sudden temptations, and this
keeping up of anger and uncharitableness, as he has been doing, year in
and year out, since ever I can remember, almost."

"We cannot judge him; he has had great troubles, and he is an old man,"
said Jacob, rising. Any allusion to Mr Fleming's disapproval of him
fretted him more than it used to do, and once or twice lately he had
allowed himself to say more than he would have liked to reach the ears
of his neighbours, and so he rose to go.

"He has never done me any hurt that I know of, and I don't suppose he'll
do enough to speak of now. It will come all round right I guess, and
then if I can do him a good turn I will."

If he had stayed a minute longer, his wife would have told him that he
at least was showing a Christian spirit in thus saying, but being left
alone, it came into her mind that no better revenge could be taken upon
the hard old man than that his enemy should heap kindness upon him.

"Not that such a thought was in Jacob's heart," she said to herself,
"but I guess he's got some new notion in his head. I never can tell
just what he means by what he says; it will be queer if he doesn't get
his own way first or last."

It was no great stretch of charity on Jacob's part to allow that the
people who believed in the Christianity of Mr Fleming might be right,
notwithstanding the old man's unreasonable antipathy to himself. He had
never doubted it, and his wife's words had startled him.

"If he is not a Christian, I am afraid some of the rest of us had better
be looking to our little deeds. I guess he has as fair a chance as the
most of us."

He did not get rid of his thoughts when he sat down in his office and
began the work of the afternoon. The remembrance of some things that he
would gladly never have remembered came back to him even while he was
busy with his writing, and he said to himself that if the controversy
between