"Oh! d----n Cantwell," roared my father, "a fellow that will tell you
that there is but one path to heaven, and that he has discovered it.
Pish! Mary, the grand route is open as the mail-coach road, and Papist
and Protestant, Quaker and Anabaptist, may jog along at even pace. I'm
not altogether sure about Jews and Methodists. One bearded vagabond
at Portsmouth charged me, when I was going to the Peninsula, ten
shillings a pound for exchanging bank notes for specie, and every
guinea the circumcised scoundrel gave was a light one. He'll fry--or
has fried already--and my poor bewildered old aunt, under the skillful
management of the Methodist preachers, who for a dozen years in their
rambles, had made her house an inn, left the three thousand five
per cents, which I expected, to blow the gospel-trumpet, either in
California or the Cape--for, God knows, I never particularly inquired
in which country the trumpeter was to sound 'boot and saddle,' after I
had ascertained that the doting fool had made a legal testament quite
sufficient for the purposes of the holy knaves who humbugged her.
Cantwell is one of the same crew, a specious hypocrite. I would attend
to the fellow no more than to that red-headed rector--every priest
is a rector now--who often held my horse at his father's forge, when
T happened to throw a shoe hunting,--and would half break his back
bowing, if I handed him now and then a sixpence. Would I believe
the dictum of that low-born dog, when he told me that in
head-quarters"--and my father elevated his hand toward heaven--"they
cared this pinch of snuff, whether upon a Friday I ate a rasher or
red-herring?"

Two episodes interrupted the polemical disquisition. In character none
could be more different--the one eventuated in a clean knock down--the
other decided indirectly my future fortunes--and, in the next chapter,
both shall be detailed.