"Aren't we, though!" he said, with sudden energy.

"Hullo!" Reed stared at him in astonishment. "You've found it out?"

"I have."

"How long since?"

Brenton hesitated.

"Six or eight months."

Reed laughed unconcernedly.

"Coincident with my home-coming, Scott? I hope I didn't bring the seeds
of disaffection with me. But, for a fact, is that the present row?"

"Yes."

There came a long silence. Then Reed spoke.

"Brenton, you always were a curiously constructed creature mentally.
What is the matter? Is your present ecclesiastical harness galling
you?"

"Yes." Brenton lighted a match with exceeding awkwardness.

"Bedding is inflammable, Brenton," Reed warned him. "Therefore I advise
you to keep a steady hand. I'm too big a brand for a slim chap like you
to pluck from the burning, to our mutual comfort. Apropos, there's
another grand idea for your sermon. You can suppress the naughty
nicotine motif for the theme, if you choose. But what in thunder, made
you put on the harness, in the first place?"

"Filial devotion."

"Exactly. I remember. But you chose another pattern, sloughed off the
work-horse collar of Calvinism in favour of the lighter ritualistic
bridle, if I may speak picturesquely. You made your choice. Now what's
the matter? Hitched up too short; or have you kicked over the traces?"

"No; not yet." Brenton spoke grimly, his overcast gray eyes offering a
curious contrast to the sunny brown ones of the man lying flat and
still before him.

This time, Reed looked anxious.

"I wouldn't, Scott," he said, and a little note of affection came into
his tone. "You'll sure be sorry."

"But, if I can't help it?"

"You can." Reed spoke crisply.

"I can't. The whole thing is galling me, I tell you, the whole--"
Brenton hesitated; "infernal sham." The last two words he flung out
with a heavy defiance.

"_Sham_ isn't a polite word for that sort of thing," Opdyke answered
swiftly. "You're the parson, Brenton; I am nothing but a sinner cut
down in my prime. Still, in your place, I think I wouldn't call it all
a sham. There's too much good inside it. When one has all the time
there is, one thinks it out, good and bad, to the bitter end. And
there's any amount more good than bad in the whole combination."

Brenton nodded; but the nod implied more denial than assent.

"Perhaps," he said slowly. "Still, it's any amount less provable."

"Proof be hanged! You'll never succeed in reducing the moral unive