of our beloved Church."

Mr. Dixon told all the Homeric story of the conference, reciting the
achievements of the champions, "deploring" this and applauding that. It
seemed that Mr. Taylor had had the audacity to quote authorities which
the bishop could not very well repudiate, though they were directly
opposed to the "safe" Episcopal pronouncement.

Mrs. Dixon of course was grieved; it was "sad" to think of a clergyman
behaving so shamefully.

"But you know, dear," she proceeded, "I have been thinking about that
unfortunate Taylor boy and his disappointments, and after what you've
just told me, I am sure it's some kind of judgment on them both. Has Mr.
Taylor forgotten the vows he took at his ordination? But don't you think,
dear, I am right, and that he has been punished: 'The sins of the
fathers'?"

Somehow or other Lucian divined the atmosphere of threatenings and
judgments, and shrank more and more from the small society of the
countryside. For his part, when he was not "mooning" in the beloved
fields and woods of happy memory, he shut himself up with books, reading
whatever could be found on the shelves, and amassing a store of
incongruous and obsolete knowledge. Long did he linger with the men of
the seventeenth century; delaying the gay sunlit streets with Pepys, and
listening to the charmed sound of the Restoration Revel; roaming by
peaceful streams with Izaak Walton, and the great Catholic divines;
enchanted with the portrait of Herber the loving ascetic; awed by the
mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cavalier poets sang their gallant
songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incantation