“Come, Mike; it’s half-past ten; the people have been waiting about the meetin’ ’us, some time; you should open the doors and toll the bell.  People can’t wait, for ever for anybody; not even for your church.”

“Then let ’em just go home, ag’in, and come when they’re called.  Because, the ould women, and the young women, and the childer, and the likes o’ them, wishes to scandalize their fellow cr’atures, Christians I will not call ’em, let ’em mate in the mill, or the school-house, and not come forenent a church on sich a business as that.  Is it toll the bell, will I, afore the Missus is in sight?—­No—­not for a whole gineration of ye, Joel; and every one o’ them, too, a much likelier man than ye bees yerself.”

“Religion is no respecter of persons”—­returned the philosophical Joel.  “Them that likes masters and mistresses may have them, for all me; but it riles me to meet with meanness.”

“It does!” cried Mike, looking up at his companion, with a very startling expression of wonder.  “If that be true, ye must be in a mighty throubled state, most of the live-long day, ye must!”

“I tell you, Michael O’Hearn, religion is no respecter of persons.  The Lord cares jist as much for me, as he does for captain Willoughby, or his wife, or his son, or his darters, or anything that is his.”

“Divil burn me, now, Joel, if I believe that!” again cried Mike, in his dogmatic manner.  “Them that understands knows the difference between mankind, and I’m sure it can be no great sacret to the Lord, when it is so well known to a poor fellow like myself.  There’s a plenthy of fellow-cr’atures that has a mighty good notion of their own excellence, but when it comes to r’ason and thruth, it’s no very great figure ye all make, in proving what ye say.  This chapel is the master’s, if chapel the heretical box can be called, and yonder bell was bought wid his money; and the rope is his; and the hands that mane to pull it, is his; and so there’s little use in talking ag’in rocks, and ag’in minds that’s made up even harder than rocks, and to spare.”

This settled the matter.  The bell was not tolled until Mrs. Willoughby, and her daughters, had got fairly through the still unprotected gateway of the stockade, although the recent discussion of political questions had so far substituted discontent for subordination in the settlement, that more than half of those who were of New England descent, had openly expressed their dissatisfaction at the delay.  Mike, however, was as unmoved as the little chapel itself, refusing to open the door until the proper moment had arrived, according to his own notion of the fitness of things.  He then proceeded to the elm, against which the little bell was hung, and commenced tolling it with as much seriousness as if the conveyer of sounds had been duly consecrated.