'He has nae mair sense o' humour than an owl, and a' aye haud that a man withoot humour sudna be allowed intae a poopit.'—Ian Maclaren.

The arrival of Sibyl at Wilderleigh was the occasion of many anxious surmises at the little Vicarage on the part of the young Vicar and his young and adoring wife.

It had long been a great grief to them that Mr. Loftus only came to church once on Sunday. It was vaguely understood that he had yielded himself to doubts on religious subjects, which alone could account for this 'laxity'—doubts which the young Vicar felt could not have shaken himself or Mrs. Gresley, and which he was convinced he could dispel. But he could never obtain an opportunity to wage war against these ghostly enemies, for though he had preached during Lent a course of sermons calculated to pulverize the infidel tendencies of the age, which his wife had pronounced to be all-conclusive and to place the whole affair in a nutshell—it certainly did that—unfortunately the person for whose spiritual needs they were concocted did not hear them.

Mr. Gresley had several times called upon Mr. Loftus with a view to giving the conversation a deeper turn, but when he was actually in his presence, and Mr. Loftus's steel-gray attentive eye was upon him, the younger man found it difficult, not to say impossible, to force conversation on subjects which Mr. Loftus had no intention to discuss.

'If he would only meet me in fair argument!' Mr. Gresley said on his return from a futile attempt to approach Mr. Loftus on the subject of public worship; 'but when I had thoroughly explained my own views on the importance of regular attendance at both services on Sunday, he only said that those being my opinions, he considered that I was fully justified in having daily services as well. If he would only meet me fairly and hear reason,' said the young clergyman; 'but he won't. The other day when I pressed him on the subject of the devil—I know he is lax on the devil—I said: "But, Mr. Loftus, do you not believe in him?" If he had only owned what I am sure was the case—namely, that he did not believe in him—I could have confuted him in a moment. I was quite ready. But he slipped out of it by saying, "Believe in him! I would not trust him for a moment." There is no arguing with a man who scoffs or is silent.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Gresley, 'infidels are all like that, and their only refuge is to be silent or profane. Don't you remember when that professor from Oxford, whom we met at Dr. Pearson's, said something about history and the Bible—I forget what, but it was perfectly unorthodox—and Dr. Pearson was so interested, and you spoke up at once, and he made no reply whatever, and then asked me the name of our Virginia creeper, and talked about flowers. I often think of that, and how he had to turn the subject.'

'But he was not convinced,' said Mr. Gresley, frowning; 'that is the odd part of it. He brought out a book on the Bible with things in it much worse than what he said in my presence, and which I positively refuted. And it went through six editions, and the Bishop actually read it.'

'You see,' said Mrs. Gresley, with the acumen which pervades the atmosphere of so many country vicarages, 'a man like the professor does not want to be convinced, or his books would not be read, any more than Mr. Loftus wants to be convinced he ought to come to church regularly, because then he would have no excuse for staying away. But perhaps his wife may be a Christian, James. They say she is quite a young girl, and that her aunt has brought her up well.'

And when Sibyl's sweet face and black velvet hat, and a wonderful flowing gown of white and lilac, appeared in the carved Wilderleigh pew beside Mr. Loftus's familiar profile, the Gresleys hoped many things; though Mrs. Gresley expressed herself, after service, as much shocked at the bride's style of dress, which she pronounced to be too showy. Mrs. Gresley's views on dress were exclusively formed at the two garden-parties and the one private ball to which she went in the course of the year. The Gresleys thought it wrong to go to public balls, and—which was quite another matter—they thought it wrong for other clergymen and their wives to go also.

It was fortunate that Mr. Loftus admired his wife's style of dress, as he had always admired Sibyl herself, from her graceful, fringeless head to her slender, low-heeled shoes. She pleased his fastidious taste as perhaps no other woman could have done. She was one of the few Englishwomen who can wear French gowns as if they are part of them, and not put on for the occasion.

After a becoming interval Mr. and Mrs. Gresley called, and this time Mrs. Gresley was somewhat mollified by what she called the very 'suitable' costume of brown holland in which Sibyl received them. Mr. Loftus did not appear, and in the course of conversation the young couple were further pleasantly impressed with the perfect orthodoxy and sound Church teaching of the bride, whose natural gift of platitude was enhanced by the subject under discussion.

They also made the discovery that Mr. Loftus was, in his wife's opinion, infallible. And Mrs. Gresley looked with some astonishment at a bride who actually entertained towards a 'layman' the unique sentiments which she did for her apostolic James.

'She is a nice young creature,' said Mrs. Gresley, half an hour later, as, with her hands full of orchids, she accompanied her lord back to the Vicarage, 'and her views, James, are beautiful—just what I think myself. She agreed with everything we said. She must have been very well brought up. But I can't understand her infatuation for Mr. Loftus. Really, from the way she spoke of him, and how he knew best, one might have supposed he was priest as well as squire here. It almost made one smile.'

Mr. Loftus and Crack had, in the meanwhile, remained in the gardens, he leaning back in a long deck-chair, looking dreamily up into the perspective of moving green above him, while Crack, who had only just arrived from Scotland, snapped mournfully at the English flies, which tasted very much the same as those of Strathspey, so few new things are there under the sun.

Sibyl had wished to bring Peter, the poodle, also to Wilderleigh, but nothing would induce Mr. Loftus to invite him. He told Sibyl that he himself hoped to replace Peter in her affections, and he had certainly succeeded.

She returned to him now, and sat down on a low stool at his feet. In these early days she was much addicted to footstools and the lowest of seats, provided they were properly placed. They were in harmony with her sentiments, and facilitated an upward gaze.

'They were so pleasant. I wish you had come in,' she said.'I find the clergy as fatiguing as Anderson's beetle found cleanliness,' said Mr. Loftus, his eyes dwelling on her. 'But that is not their fault. It is because I happen to be a beetle.'

'I was a little tired, too,' said Sibyl hastily. 'They stayed rather long.'

'And did you like them?'

'Yes; I thought them very nice. And I am glad they are High Church. I think it is so much nicer, don't you?'

'Do you mean to tell me, now that we are married and it is too late to go back, that you are High Church?'

'Oh, not very high!' said Sibyl anxiously, yet reassured by his look of amusement. 'Which are you?'

'I am the same as Mr. Gresley,' said Mr. Loftus slowly, 'with a difference.'

'I thought you were different,' said Sibyl, gratified at her own powers of observation.

'I know,' continued Mr. Loftus, 'that he thinks I have no principles at all, because he believes they are not the same as his; but in reality they are very much the same as his, only they are carried further afield, and he loses sight of them, while he has a neat little ring-fence round his own. I like Mr. Gresley very much. He is an exemplary young man. But some people become very narrow by walking in the narrow path, and I fear he is one of them. Remember this, my Sibyl, that there is no barrier in your own character against which someone, sooner or later, will not stumble to his hurt. No boundary in ourselves will serve to shut God in, as this good young man thinks, but every boundary will at last shut out some fellow-creature from us, and be to one, whom perhaps we might have helped, an occasion of stumbling. And now let us show Crack the brook. I am afraid he will think but little of it after the Spey, but he will be too polite to say so. As he only arrived yesterday, it is premature to put it into words, but I have an intuition that Crack and I shall become friends. If I had any influence over him, I would encourage him to bathe in the brook, for he brought into the house with him this morning an odour that convinced me that we were on the eve of some great chemical discovery.'

So they wandered down by the brook, across the lengthening shadows. A cock pheasant was clearing his throat in the wood near the gardens. The low sun had become entangled in the rookery. A pair of sandpipers were balancing their slender selves on a tiny beach of sand. A little black and white water-ousel darted upstream with rapid, bee-like flight. Crack followed, gravely investigating the bank point by point, as if on the look-out for some fallacy in it.

And Sibyl registered the conclusion in her own mind that one must be 'wide,' like Mr. Loftus, not narrow, like Mr. Gresley. After this conversation she always spoke of her religious convictions as 'wide.'