That there was a real idea in the old man's mind was considerably
clearer than the logic by which he tried to bring it out.

"Did you know parson that's gone, sir?" he went on.

"No," I answered.

"Oh, sir! he wur a good parson. Many's the time he come and sit at
my son's bedside--him that's dead and gone, sir--for a long hour, on
a Saturday night, too. And then when I see him up in the desk the
next mornin', I'd say to myself, 'Old Rogers, that's the same man as
sat by your son's bedside last night. Think o' that, Old Rogers!'
But, somehow, I never did feel right sure o' that same. He didn't
seem to have the same cut, somehow; and he didn't talk a bit the
same. And when he spoke to me after sermon, in the church-yard, I
was always of a mind to go into the church again and look up to the
pulpit to see if he war really out ov it; for this warn't the same
man, you see. But you'll know all about it better than I can tell
you, sir. Only I always liked parson better out o' the pulpit, and
that's how I come to want to make you look at me, sir, instead o'
the water down there, afore I see you in the church to-morrow
mornin'."

The old man laughed a kindly laugh; but he had set me thinking, and
I did not know what to say to him all at once. So after a short
pause, he resumed--

"You'll be thinking me a queer kind of a man, sir, to speak to my
betters before my betters speaks to me. But mayhap you don't know
what a parson is to us poor folk that has ne'er a friend more larned