The unsuspecting preacher did not perceive
the scornful sneer which curled his lips and flashed his eyes,
by which his own vanity still asserted itself through the whole
proceeding; or he would not have been so sure that the mantle
of grace which he deemed to have surely fallen upon the shoulders
of his companion, was sufficiently large and sound, to cover
the multitude of sins which it yet enabled the wearer, so far, to
conceal. Regarding him with all the favor which one is apt to feel
for the person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the
soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no
great effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not
only of all its own secrets and secret hopes--for these were of but
small value in the eyes of the worldling--but of all those matters
which belonged to the little village to which they were trending,
and the unwritten lives of every dweller in that happy community.
With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the
testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody
those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly
unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand--Stevens
now propounded his direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly
unconsidered insinuation, by which he drew from the preacher as
much as he cared to know of the rustic lads and lasses of Charlemont.
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