t with an air
of great respect. Blushing deeply and involuntarily, she turned her eyes
hastily away, and approaching the good doctor, made her inquiries into
the present state of his nerves, in a graver tone than she had a
minute before imagined it possible that she should have been enabled to
command.

"Ah! my good young lady," said the doctor, squeezing her hand, "I--may,
I may say the church--for am I not its minister? was in imminent
danger--but this excellent gentleman prevented the sacrilege, at least
in great measure. I only lost some of my dues,--my rightful dues,--for
which I console myself with thinking that the infamous and abandoned
villain will suffer hereafter."

"There cannot be the least doubt of that," said the young man. "Had
he only robbed the mail-coach, or broken into a gentleman's house, the
offence might have been expiable; but to rob a clergyman, and a rector
too!--Oh, the sacrilegious dog!"

"Your warmth does you honour, sir," said the doctor, beginning now
to recover; "and I am very proud to have made the acquaintance of a
gentleman of such truly religious opinions."

"Ah!" cried the stranger, "my foible, sir,--if I may so speak,--is a
sort of enthusiastic fervour for the Protestant Establishment. Nay,
sir, I never come across the very nave of the church without feeling an
indescribable emotion--a kind of sympathy, as it were--with--with--you
understand me, sir--I fear I express myself ill."

"Not at all, not at all!" exclaimed the doctor: "such sentiments are
uncommon in one so young."

"Sir, I learned them early in life from a friend and preceptor of mine,
Mr. MacGrawler, and I trust they may continue with me to my dying day."

Here the doctor's servant entered with (we borrow a phrase from the
novel of ----------) "the tea-equipage;" and Mrs. Slopperton, betaking
herself to its superintendence, inquired with more composure than
hitherto had belonged to her demeanour, what sort of a looking creature
the ruffian was.

"I will tell you, my dear, I will tell you, Miss Lucy, all about it.
I was walking home from Mr. Slowforth's, with his money in my pocket,
thinking, my love, of buying you that topaz cross you wished to have."

"Dear, good man!" cried Mrs. Slopperton; "what a fiend it must have been
to rob so excellent a creature!"

"And," resumed the doctor, "it also occurred to me that the Madeira was
nearly out,--the Madeira, I mean, with the red seal; and I was thinking
it might