He had just received one of those ominous letters, at the little post office in the town we have already mentioned, and, full of the melancholy news it contained, Dr. Danvers was returning slowly towards his home.  As he rode into a lonely road, traversing an undulating tract of some three miles in length, the singularity, it may be, of his costume attracted the eye of another passenger, who was, as it turned out, no other than Marston himself.  For two or three miles of this desolate road, their ways happened to lie together.  Marston’s first impulse was to avoid the clergyman; his second, which he obeyed, was to join company, and ride along with him, at all events, for so long as would show that he shrank from no encounter which fortune or accident presented.  There was a spirit of bitter defiance in this, which cost him a painful effort.

“How do you do, Parson Danvers?” said Marston, touching his hat with the handle of his whip.

Danvers thought he had seldom seen a man so changed in so short a time.  His face had grown sallow and wasted, and his figure slightly stooped, with an appearance almost of feebleness.

“Mr. Marston,” said the clergyman, gravely, and almost sternly, though with some embarrassment, “it is a long time since you and I have seen one another, and many and painful events have passed in the interval.  I scarce know upon what terms we meet.  I am prompted to speak to you, and in a tone, perhaps, which you will hardly brook; and yet, if we keep company, as it seems likely we may, I cannot, and I ought not, to be silent.”

“Well, Mr. Danvers, I accept the condition—­speak what you will,” said Marston, with a gloomy promptitude.  “If you exceed your privilege, and grow uncivil, I need but use my spurs, and leave you behind me preaching to the winds.”

“Ah!  Mr. Marston,” said Dr. Danvers, almost sadly, after a considerable pause, “when I saw you close beside me, my heart was troubled within me.”

“You looked on me as something from the nether world, and expected to see the cloven hoof,” said Marston, bitterly, and raising his booted foot a little as he spoke; “but, after all, I am but a vulgar sinner of flesh and blood, without enough of the preternatural about me to frighten an old nurse, much less to agitate a pillar of the Church.”

“Mr. Marston, you talk sarcastically, but you feel that recent circumstances, as well as old recollections, might well disturb and trouble me at sight of you,” answered Dr. Danvers.

“Well—­yes—­perhaps it is so,” said Marston, hastily and sullenly, and became silent for a while.

“My heart is full, Mr. Marston; charged with grief, when I think of the sad history of those with whom, in my mind, you must ever be associated,” said Doctor Danvers.

“Aye, to be sure,” said Marston, with stern impatience; “but, then, you have much to console you.  You have got your comforts and your respectability; all the dearer, too, from the contrast of other people’s misfortunes and degradations; then you have your religion moreover—­”