"Oh, I don't mean that you lie," explained the angry defender of the faith. "If you heard Bartram say it, he did say it, of course. But there's something wrong somewhere. The minister's rather lost his head over Sam Kimper, just because the wretch isn't back in his old ways again, and he's got a new notion in his head about how the gospel ought to be preached. New notions have been plenty enough ever since true religion started; there's always some man or men thinking out things for themselves and forgetting everything else on account of them. There were meddlers of that kind back to the days of the apostles, and goodness knows the history of the church is full of them. They've been so set in their ways that no sort of discipline would cure them; they've even had to be hanged or burned, to save the faith from being knocked to pieces."
"But, brother Quickset," pleaded the other deacon, "every one knows our pastor isn't that sort of a person. He is an intelligent, thoughtful, unexcitable man, that—"
"That's just the kind that always makes the worst heretics," roared the deacon. "Wasn't Servetus that kind of a person? And didn't Calvin have to burn him at the stake? I tell you, deacon, it takes a good deal of the horror out of those times when you have a case of the kind come right up before your eyes."
"What? Somebody being burned?" exclaimed the other deacon, raising his hands in horror.
"No, no," testily replied the defender of the faith. "Only somebody that ought to be."
"But where does the lying come in, that you were talking about?"
"I tell you just what I believe," said Deacon Quickset, dropping his voice and drawing closer to his associate; "I believe Dr. Guide believes just what he says,—of course nobody's going to doubt that he's sincere,—but when it's come to the pinch he's felt a little shaky. What does any other man do when he finds himself shaky about an important matter of opinion? Why, he consults a lawyer, and gets himself pulled through."
"But you don't mean to say that you think Dr. Guide would go to a rank, persistent disbeliever in anything—but himself—like Ray Bartram, do you, in a matter of this kind?"
"Why not? Ministers have often got lawyers to help them when they've been muddled on points of orthodoxy. What the lawyer believes or don't believe hasn't got anything to do with it: it's his business to believe as his client does, and make other folks believe so, too. Ray Bartram is just the sort of a fellow a man would want in such a case. He's got that way of looking as if he knew everything, just like his father had before him, that makes folks give in to him in spite of themselves. Besides, he'll say or do anything to carry his point."
"Isn't that putting it rather strong, Brother Quickset?"