rs--or discountenances it, to
say the least."

"There I join issue with you, maintaining that all such occasions are
covered by the general authority bestowed at Ordination with the
laying-on of hands--'Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven,'
etc. To construe an open exhortation in one of her offices as a
silent denunciation in all the rest seems to me--"

For the next few minutes the pair enjoyed themselves to the top of
their bent; until, as the Master pushed aside some papers on the
table to get at his Prayer Book--to prove that No. XXV of the
Articles of Religion did not by its wording disparage Absolution--his
eye fell on a letter which lay uppermost. He paused midway in a
sentence, picked the thing up and held it for a moment disgustfully
between forefinger and thumb.

"Brother Copas," he said with a change of voice, "we lose ourselves
in logomachy, and I had rather hark back to a word you let drop a
while ago about the Brotherhood. You spoke of 'setting old men by
the ears.' Do you mean it seriously--that our Brethren, just now,
are not dwelling in concord?"

"God bless your innocent old heart!" murmured Brother Copas under his
breath. Aloud he said, "Men of the Brethren's age, Master, are not
always amiable; and the tempers of their womenfolk are sometimes
unlovely. We are, after all, failures in life, and to have lived
night and day beside any one of us can be no joke."

The Master, with his body half-turned towards the reading-lamp, still
held the letter and eyed it at arm's length.

"I observed," he said after a while, "that Brother Bonaday did not
sign your Petition. Yet I had supposed him to be an Evangelical, and
everyone knows you two to be close friends." The Master mused again.
"Pardon me, but he has some reason, of course?"

"He has."

--"Which you are not at liberty to tell me?"

"That is so."

"Ah, well," said the Master, turning and facing about on Brother
Copas with a sudden resolve. "I wonder if--to leave this matter of
the Petition--you can tell me something else concerning your friend;
something which, if you can answer it so as to help him, will also
lift a sad weight off my mind. If you cannot, I shall equally forget
that the question was ever put or the answer withheld. . . . To be
candid, when you were shown in I was sitting here in great distress
of mind."

"Surely not about Bonaday, Master?" said Brother Copas, wondering.

"About Bonaday, yes." The Maste