"Yes, a miracle indeed," I replied gravely. "A double miracle, that I escaped, and am at last anchored."
"Anchored!" he exclaimed incredulously, "do tell me where you can find bottom after such uprooting."
"Where you will perhaps despise me more than if I had been content to walk the Calvinistic rut through life," was my reply, as I gave into his hand my prayer-book. He examined it with curiosity and surprise. "A Catholic! a Roman Catholic!" he exclaimed at length, with a shade of what I thought savored of contempt in the tone of his voice; "you, William Dewey, son of Deacon Norman Dewey, of the puritanical city of Boston, you a Papist! Excuse me if I cannot help saying, it seems to me, 'out of the frying-pan into the fire.'"
"And pray, may I ask where you find yourself religiously?" I said; "men of our years, after the fifties, ought to be fixed somewhere."
"On the other pole from yourself," he replied quickly; "I believe in no creed, no church, no—"
"No God?" I questioned, a little satirically.
"A great first cause, certainly," he said slowly. "Yes, the God in everything, 'Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,' the true Shekinah is man. But let us not mar this pleasant reunion with discussions. With your fixed faith, you can have no sympathy religiously with one the pride of whose creed is, that it is changing daily, wholly unfixed and afloat."
"There you mistake," I replied earnestly. "I can and do most heartily sympathize with you; for I floated for years on that same waste of waters—that shoreless sea of doubt."
"Is it possible! and came at last where you are? I know nothing about the Catholic faith, I must own, from actual study, and from what I have heard I did not think it would bear examination; but there must be something in it if it has caught you, and, if you like, it would give me pleasure to hear the process: but perhaps you will object?"