CHAPTER II.


A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO.


Whosoever has noticed a party of those sedate and Germanesquely
philosophical animals, the pigs, scrambling precipitately under a gate
from out a cabbage-patch toward nightfall, may, perhaps, have observed,
that, immediately upon emerging from the sacred vegetable preserve, a
couple of the more elderly and designing of them assumed a sudden air of
abstracted musing, and reduced their progress to a most dignified and
leisurely walk, as though to convince the human beholder that their
recent proximity to the cabbages had been but the trivial accident of a
meditative stroll.

Similarly, service in the church being over, and divers persons of
piggish solemnity of aspect dispersing, two of the latter detach
themselves from the rest and try an easy lounge around toward a side
door of the building, as though willing to be taken by the outer world
for a couple of unimpeachable low-church gentlemen who merely happened
to be in that neighborhood at that hour for an airing.

The day and year are waning, and the setting sun casts a ruddy but not
warming light upon two figures under the arch of the side door; while
one of these figures locks the door, the other, who seems to have a