person,
like an inexperienced bicyclist, now against Lazarus and his
grave-clothes, now against the legs of John the Baptist, with one foot
on a river's edge and the other firmly planted in a distant desert, and
against all the other Scripture characters in turn which adorned the
windows.

The service ended at last, and, after releasing his unwilling
congregation by catching and carrying it, beak agape, into the open air,
Mr. Gresley and his wife walked through the church-yard--with its one
melancholy Scotch fir, embarrassed by its trouser of ivy--to the little
gate which led into their garden.

They were a pleasing couple, seen at a little distance. He, at least,
evidently belonged to a social status rather above that of the average
clergyman, though his wife may not have done so. Mr. Gresley, with his
long, thin nose and his short upper lip and tall, well-set-up figure,
bore on his whole personality the stamp of that for which it is
difficult to find the right name, so unmeaning has the right name become
by dint of putting it to low uses--the maltreated, the travestied name
of "gentleman."

None of those moral qualities, priggish or otherwise, are assumed for
Mr. Gresley which, we are told, distinguish the true, the perfect
gentleman, and some of which, thank Heaven! the "gentleman born"
frequently lacks. Whether he had them or not was a matter of opinion,
but he had that which some who have it not strenuously affirm to be of
no value--the right outside.

To any one who looked beyond the first impression of good-breeding and a
well-cut coat, a second closer glance was discouraging. Mr. Gresley's
suspicious eye and thin, compressed lips hinted that both fanatic and
saint were fighting for predominance in the kingdom of that pinched
brain, the narrowness of which the sloping forehead betokened with such
cruel plainness. He looked as if he would fling himself as hard against
a truth without perceiving it as a hunted hare against a stone-wall. He
was unmistakably of those who only see side issues.

Mrs. Gresley took her husband's arm as he closed the gate. She was still
young and still pretty, in spite of the arduous duties of a clergyman's
wife, and the depressing fact that she seemed always wearing out old
finery. Perhaps her devotion to her husband had served to prolong her
youth, for as the ivy is to the oak, and as the moon is to the sun, and
as the river is to the sea, so was Mrs. Gresley to Mr. Gresley.

T