"I have said more than I ought already; for one has an idea that, by bringing a clergyman into disrepute, it brings religion and the church into discredit, too. A priest must be a very bad man to have injurious things said of him, in this country, Hugh."
"That is, perhaps, true. But you like Mr. Warren better than him who has left you?"
"A thousand times, and in all things. In addition to having a most pious and sincere pastor, we have an agreeable and well-bred neighbour, from whose mouth, in the five years that he has dwelt here, I have not heard a syllable at the expense of a single fellow-creature. You know how it is apt to be with the other clergy and ours, in the country—for ever at swords' points; and if not actually quarrelling, keeping up a hollow peace."
"That is only too true—or used to be true, before I went abroad."
"And it is so now, elsewhere, I'll answer for it, though it be so no longer here. Mr. Warren and Mr. Peck seem to live on perfectly amicable terms, though as little alike at bottom as fire and water."
"By the way, how do the clergy of the different sects, up and down the country, behave on the subject of anti-rent?"
"I can answer only from what I hear, with the exception of Mr. Warren's course. He has preached two or three plain and severe sermons on the duty of honesty in our worldly transactions, one of which was from the tenth commandment. Of course he said nothing of the particular trouble, but everybody must have made the necessary application of the home-truths he uttered. I question if another voice has been raised, far and near, on the subject, although I have heard Mr. Warren say the movement threatens more to demoralize New York than anything that has happened in his time."
"And the man down at the village?"
"Oh, he goes, of course, with the majority. When was one of that set ever known to oppose his parish, in anything?"
"And Mary is as sound and as high-principled as her father?"