clergyman, gravely, and almost sternly, though
with some embarrassment, "it is a long time since you and I have seen
one another, and many and painful events have passed in the interval.
I scarce know upon what terms we meet. I am prompted to speak to you,
and in a tone, perhaps, which you will hardly brook; and yet, if we
keep company, as it seems likely we may, I cannot, and I ought not, to
be silent."

"Well, Mr. Danvers, I accept the condition--speak what you will," said
Marston, with a gloomy promptitude. "If you exceed your privilege, and
grow uncivil, I need but use my spurs, and leave you behind me preaching
to the winds."

"Ah! Mr. Marston," said Dr. Danvers, almost sadly, after a considerable
pause, "when I saw you close beside me, my heart was troubled within me."

"You looked on me as something from the nether world, and expected to see
the cloven hoof," said Marston, bitterly, and raising his booted foot a
little as he spoke; "but, after all, I am but a vulgar sinner of flesh
and blood, without enough of the preternatural about me to frighten an
old nurse, much less to agitate a pillar of the Church."

"Mr. Marston, you talk sarcastically, but you feel that recent
circumstances, as well as old recollections, might well disturb and
trouble me at sight of you," answered Dr. Danvers.

"Well--yes--perhaps it is so," said Marston, hastily and sullenly, and
became silent for a while.

"My heart is full, Mr. Marston; charged with grief, when I think of the
sad history of those with whom, in my mind, you must ever be associated,"
said Doctor Danvers.

"Aye, to be sure," said Marston, with stern impatience; "but, then, you
have much to console you. You have got your comforts and your
respectability; all the dearer, too, from the contrast of other people's
misfortunes and degradations; then you have your religion moreover--"

"Yes," interrupted Danvers, earnestly, and hastening to avoid a sneer
upon this subject; "God be blessed, I am an humble follower of his
gracious Son, our Redeemer; and though, I trust, I should bear with
patient submission whatever chastisement in his wisdom and goodness he
might see fit to inflict upon me, yet I do praise and bless him for the
mercy which has hitherto spared me, and I do feel that mercy all the more
profoundly, from the afflictions and troubles with which I daily see
others overtaken."

"And in the matter of piety and decorum, doubtless, you bless God also,"
said M