"
Away went Deacon Quickset to Bartram's office, and was so fortunate as
to find the lawyer in. He went right at his subject:
"Well, young man, you've been in nice business, haven't you?--trying to
go up to the throne of grace right behind a jail-bird, while the
leaders and teachers whom the Lord has selected have been spurned by
you for years!"
Reynolds Bartram was too new a convert to have changed his old self and
manner to any great extent: so he flushed angrily, and retorted,--
"One thief is about as good as another, Deacon Quickset."
Then it was the deacon's turn to look angry. The two men faced each
other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set
jaws. The deacon was the first to recover himself: he took a chair, and
said,--
"Maybe I haven't heard the story rightly. What I came around for was to
get it from first hands. Would you mind telling me?"
"I suppose you allude to my conversion?"
"Yes," said the deacon, with a look of doubt, "I suppose that's what we
will have to call it, for want of a better word."
"It is a very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he
leaned against his desk and folded his arms. "Like every other man with
any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually,
and have had to believe that if it was right, as I heard it talked, it
had sometimes got away from its Founder in a manner for which there
seemed to be no excuse.
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