Malcolm -- here August winced -- had well nigh driven her to run off with the straps and watch-seals to get rid of you and Betsey and her precious and mighty affectionate ma."

"But she won't look at me in meeting, and she sent Humphreys to me with an insulting message."

"Which text divides itself into two parts, my brethren and fellow-travelers to eternity. To treat the last head first, beloved, I admonish you not to believe a blackleg, unless it's under circumstances when he's got unusual and irresistible temptations to tell the truth. I don't advise you to spit on the slate and rub it out in this case. Break the slate and throw it away. To come to the second particular, which is the first in the order of my text, my attentive congregation. She didn't look at you in meeting. Now, I guess you don't know nothing of her mother's heart-disease. Heart-disease is trumps with Abigail Anderson. She plays that every turn. Just think of a young girl who thinks that if she looks at her beau when her mother's by, she might kill her invaluable parent of heart-disease. For my part, I don't take any stock in Mrs. Abby Anderson's dying of heart-disease, no ways. Might as well talk about a whale dying of footrot."

"Well, Jonas, what counsel do you give our young friend? Your sagacity is to be depended on."

"Why, I advise him to speak face to face with the angel of his life. Let him climb into my room tonight. Leave meeting just before the benediction -- he can do without that once -- and go double-quick across the fields, and get safe into my studio. Further particulars when the time arrives."I want to remark here that there are many situations in life in which a conscience is dreadfully in the way. There are people who go straight ahead to success--such as it is--with no embarrassments, no fire in the rear from any scruples. Some of these days I mean to write an essay on "The Inconvenience of having a Conscience," in which I shall proceed to show that it costs more in the course of a year or two, than it would to keep a stableful of fast horses. Many a man could afford to drive Dexters and Flora Temples who would be ruined by a conscience. But I must not write the essay here, for I am keeping August out in the night air and his perplexity all this time.

August Wehle had the habit, I think I have said, of going through with an enterprise. He had another habit, a very inconvenient habit doubtless, but a very manly one, of listening for the voice of his conscience. And I think that this habit would have even yet turned him back, as he 

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