simplicity of the church service which went straight to Andy’s heart, and more than all, there was something in Mr. Townsend’s voice, and manner, and face, which touched a responsive chord in the breast of the boyish Andy, and when at last the bishop came to that section of Iowa, his hands were first laid in blessing on the bowed head of Andy, who knelt to receive the rite of confirmation in the presence of a large concourse of people, to most of whom the service and ceremony were entirely new.

While rejoicing and thanking God for the change, which she felt was wholly sincere, Mrs. Markham had deeply deplored the pertinacity with which Andy had clung to his resolve to join “Mr. Townsend’s church or none.”  She did not doubt Mr. Townsend’s piety or Andy’s either, but she doubted the Episcopalians generally because they did not require more than God himself requires, and it hurt her sore that Andy should go with them rather than to her church across the brook, where Father Aberdeen preached every Sunday against the pride, and pomp, and worldliness generally of his Episcopal brethren.  Andy believed in Mr. Townsend, and in time he came to believe heart and soul in the church doctrines as taught by him, and the beautiful consistency of his daily life was to his mother like a constant and powerful argument in favor of the church to which he belonged, while to his brothers it was a powerful argument in favor of the religion he professed.

That Andy Markham was a Christian no one doubted.  It showed itself in every act of his life; it shone in his beaming, good-natured face, and made itself heard in the touching pathos of his voice, when he repeated aloud in his room the prayers of his church, saying to his mother, when she objected that his prayers were made up beforehand:  “And for the land’s sake, ain’t the sams and hims, which are nothing but prayers set to music, made up beforehand?  A pretty muss you’d have of it if everybody should strike out for himself, a singin’ his own words just as they popped into his head.”

Mrs. Markham was not convinced, but she let Andy alone after that, simply remarking that “the prayer-book would not always answer the purpose; there would come a time when just what he wanted was not there.”

Andy was willing to wait till that time came, trusting to Mr. Townsend to find for him some way of escape; and so the matter dropped, and he was free to read his prayers as much as he pleased.  He had heard from Richard that his new sister was of his way of thinking—­that though not a member of the church except by baptism, she was an Episcopalian, and would be married by that form.