He came forward, holding out his hand--very friendly apparently. Then,
requesting me to be seated, he drew out a chair from the wall and sat
down, tilting it back on two legs and leaning against the wall, with
his hands folded before him. Some commonplace remark about the
weather, which I answered, led to a rambling conversation, in which he
expressed the greatest curiosity as to worldly matters, and asked
several purely local questions about the city of New York. Perhaps his
ignorance was feigned. I do not know, but I found myself relating,
_à la_ Stanley-Livingstone, some of the current events of the day. His
face was quite intelligent, tanned with labor in the fields, and his
brown eyes were kind and soft, like those of some dumb animals. I note
his eyes here especially, as different in expression from those of
others of his sect.

Several times during the conversation I heard footsteps in the hall,
and darted from my seat, and finally, in my impatience, began to pace
the floor. Kindly as he looked, I did not wish to question the man
about Bessie. I would rely upon the beaming portress, whose "_Sure_"
was such an earnest of her good-will. Moreover, a feeling of contempt,
growing out of pity, was taking possession of me. This man, in what
did he differ from the Catholic priest save in the utter selfishness
of his creed? Beside the sordid accumulation of gain to which his life
was devoted the priest's mission among crowded alleys and
fever-stricken lanes seemed luminous and grand. A moral suicide, with
no redeeming feature. The barns bursting with fatness, the comfortable
houses, gain added to gain--to what end? I was beginning to give very
short answers indeed to his questions, and was already meditating a
foray through the rest of the house, when the door opened slowly and a
lady-abbess entered. She was stiff and stately, with the most formal