The two men faced each other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set jaws.

The deacon was the first to recover himself: he took a chair, and said,-- "Maybe I haven't heard the story rightly.

What I came around for was to get it from first hands.

Would you mind telling me ?" "I suppose you allude to my conversion ?" "Yes," said the deacon, with a look of doubt, "I suppose that's what we will have to call it, for want of a better word." "It is a very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he leaned against his desk and folded his arms.

"Like every other man with any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually, and have had to believe that if it was right, as I heard it talked, it had sometimes got away from its Founder in a manner for which there seemed to be no excuse.