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A Colonial Wooing

dark, and their efforts be as vain as beating the air? The meeting appeared to be of one mind, but might not a whole meeting be in error?"

Caleb's warnings fell upon deaf ears. The meeting as such was incapable of going astray, and they went on with committee appointments and committee instruction as if they were attending wholly to their own business, which they were not. Robert Pearson was not within their jurisdiction and John Bishop was. He must be called upon to explain, and it was a foregone conclusion only that would be acceptable that did not conflict with what Matthew Watson had said.

Robert Pearson, who mysteriously kept posted upon every movement "of the enemy," as he called them, and yet was always deep in the background, knew of the time of the committee conferring with Matthew, and pretty shrewdly guessed at the result. It was in effect that Matthew was a long-suffering saint and John Bishop a miserable sinner. All was so clear to them now

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