u?" Celia supplied his halting question. "No, I DON'T
mind. I have a reason for wanting to know--to satisfy myself whether I
had guessed rightly or not--about the kind of man you are. I mean in the
matter of temperament and bent of mind and tastes."

The girl seemed to be speaking seriously, and without intent to offend.
Theron did not find any comment ready, but walked along by her side,
wondering much what it was all about.

"I daresay you think me 'too familiar on short acquaintance,'" she
continued, after a little.

"My dear Miss Madden!" he protested perfunctorily.

"No; it is a matter of a good deal of importance," she went on. "I can
see that you are going to be thrown into friendship, close contact, with
Father Forbes. He likes you, and you can't help liking him. There is
nobody else in this raw, overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him
TO like, nobody except that man, that Dr. Ledsmar. And if you like HIM,
I shall hate you! He has done mischief enough already. I am counting on
you to help undo it, and to choke him off from doing more. It would be
different if you were an ordinary Orthodox minister, all encased like
a terrapin in prejudices and nonsense. Of course, if you had been THAT
kind, we should never have got to know you at all. But when I saw you in
MacEvoy's cottage there, it was plain that you were one of US--I mean a
MAN, and not a marionette or a mummy. I am talking very frankly to you,
you see. I want you on my side, against that doctor and his heartless,
bloodless science."

"I feel myself very heartily on your side," replied Theron. She had set
their progress at a slower pace, now that the lights of the main
street were drawing near, as if to prolong their talk. All his earlier
reservations had fled. It was almost as if she were a parishioner of
his own. "I need hardly tell you that the doctor's whole attitude
toward--toward revelation--was deeply repugnant to me. It doesn't make
it any the less hateful to call it science. I am afraid, though," he
went on hesitatingly, "that there are difficulties in the way of my
helping, as you call it. You see, the very fact of my being a Methodist
minister, and his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interference
out of the question."

"No; that doesn't matter a button," said Celia, lightly. "None of us
think of that at all."

"There is the other embarrassment, then," pursued Theron, diffidently,
"that Father Forbes is a vastly broader and dee