discomfiture. The imperturbability and easy replies of the woman
harassed and tormented me in the extreme. I had been too recent a pupil
to be thoroughly versed in all the subtleties and mysteries of my
office. Silence was painful to me, and reply only accumulated difficulty
and vexation. She seemed so happy, too; in the midst of all her heresy
and error there existed an unaffected tranquillity and repose which I
would have purchased at any cost or sacrifice. I blushed and grew
ashamed, and for a moment forgot that the bereaved creature was unable
to behold the confusion with which defeat and exposure had covered me.
At length I spoke imperfectly, loosely, and at random. The woman
detected me in an untenable position--checked me--and in her artless
manner, laid bare the fallacy of an inconsiderate assertion. In an
instant I was aware of my conviction, I retracted my expression, and
involved myself immediately in fresh dilemma. Again, and as gently as
before, she made the unsoundness of a principle evident and glaring. How
I closed the argument--the conversation and the interview--and escaped
from her, I know not. Burning with shame, despising myself, and desirous
of burying both my disgrace and self deep in the earth, where both might
be forgotten, I was sensible of hurrying homeward. I reached it in
despair, satisfied that I had become a coward and a renegade, and that I
was lost, hopelessly and utterly here upon earth, and eternally
in heaven!

I had resolved, upon the day succeeding this adventure, to restore to my
benefactor the credentials with which be had been pleased to entrust me.
Satisfied of the truth of my commission, I could only deplore my
inability to execute it faithfully. In spite of what had passed at the
cottage-door, the doctrines which I had advocated there lost none of
their character and influence upon my own mind. Falling from the lips of
others, they dropped with conviction into my _own_ soul. Nothing could