Al KENSIDE

               CHAPTER I

        THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE

  THE good people of Devonshire were rather
given to quarreling-sometimes about the minis-
ter's wife, meek, gentle Mrs. Tiverton, whose
manner of housekeeping, or style of dress, did not
exactly suit them; sometimes about the minister
himself, good, patient Mr. Tiverton, who vainly
imagined that if he preached three sermons a
week, attended the Wednesday evening prayer-
meeting. the Thursday evening sewing society,
officiated at every funeral, visited all the sick, and
gave to every beggar who called at his door, be-
sides superintending the Sunday school, he was
earning his salary of six hundred per year.
  Sometimes, and that not rarely, the quarrel
crept into the choir, and then, for one whole Sun-
day, it was all in vain that Mr. Tiverton read the
psalm and hymn, casting troubled glances toward
the vacant seats of his refractory singers. There
was no one to respond, unless it were good old