Oh,
yes, I know you go sometimes to the Presbyterian chapel" (he actually
used the word chapel!), "but you do that because Miss Stennis is your
friend, and though, of course, anything is better than nothing----"

"It's as good as----" I was beginning hotly, when he interrupted me.

"Yes, yes," he cried hastily, "of course that is all right for those
who are in it. But you are a Churchman and the son of a Churchman.
_I_ don't go hunting Presbyterians all over two parishes. But when I
see a Churchman, and the son of a Churchman, in danger of
drifting--well, I step over the line of my duty and speak my mind."

I answered nothing, for after all clergymen have a monopoly of that
kind of talk. But I kept my wits about me. I thought he was going to
ask me to come regularly to his church so as to keep me away from
Elsie, but not a bit of him.

"What I want you to promise me is that when you go to Edinburgh you
will lose no time in looking up a friend of mine, Harry Ryan, who has a
church on the South Side. If you don't he will look you up. But I
want you to go, on the principle of one volunteer being worth two
pressed men. More than that, it will do you good, and if you have left
any friends here in Breckonside they will, I am sure, be glad that you
are being looked after a bit. I don't mean that your liberty will be
interfered with in the least. It won't be interfered with half enough
in these lecturing barrack-rooms they call Scotch universities. But
any way, don't be afraid. Harry Ryan will see you through."

Well, I could say no less than that I would do as he said. And when I
heard that Mr. Ryan was a good "cover," as well as a safe bat and
change bowler, I thought I would risk it. Afterwards I found it would
have been one of the best things I could do. Though, mind you, for all
that there may have been some thought of Elsie in the back of Mr.
Ablethorpe's mind. For there were heaps and heaps of pretty girls at
Mr. Ryan's church, as I found out when I visited the city--all sorts,
swell girls, villa girls, and shop girls (these last the prettiest).
And he may have thought that among so many I would be almost certain to
forget Elsie. He _may_, I say. I don't know that he did. Only--I
should in his place.

Well, my curate, he went on like sticks a-breaking all about the
difference between church and chapel, and how, though the Presbyterians
were by law established in Scotland, they were only chapel p