“You are getting beyond me:  but why do you not apply a little of the worldly wisdom which these same casuists taught you?”

“To tell you the truth, I have tried in past years, and found that the medicine would not act.”

“Humph!  Well, that would depend, again, on the previous diagnosis of human nature being correct; and those old monks, I should say, would know about as much of human nature as so many daws in a steeple.  Still, you wouldn’t say that what was the matter with old Heale was the matter also with Vavasour?”

“I believe from my heart that it is.”

“Humph!  Then you know the symptoms of his complaint?”

“I know that he never comes to church.”

“Nothing more?  I am really speaking in confidence.  You surely have heard of disagreements between him and Mrs. Vavasour?”

“Never, I assure you; you shock me.”

“I am exceedingly sorry, then, that I said a word about it:  but the whole parish talks of it,” answered Tom, who was surprised at this fresh proof of the little confidence which Aberalva put in their parson.

“Ah!” said Frank sadly, “I am the last person in the parish to hear any news:  but this is very distressing.”

“Very, to me.  My honour, to tell you the truth, as a medical man, is concerned in the matter; for she is growing quite ill from unhappiness, and I cannot cure her; so I come to you, as soul-doctor, to do what I, the body-doctor, cannot.”

Frank sat pondering for a minute, and then—­

“You set me on a task for which I am as little fit as any man, by your own showing.  What do I know of disagreements between man and wife?  And one has a delicacy about offering her comfort.  She must bestow her confidence on me before I can use it:  while he—­”

“While he, as the cause of the disease, is what you ought to treat; and not her unhappiness, which is only a symptom of it.”

“Spoken like a wise doctor; but to tell you the truth, Thurnall, I have no influence over Mr. Vavasour, and see no means of getting any.  If he recognised my authority, as his parish priest, then I should see my way.  Let him be as bad as he might, I should have a fixed point from which to work; but with his free-thinking notions, I know well—­one can judge it too easily from his poems—­he would look on me as a pedant assuming a spiritual tyranny to which I have no claim.”

Tom sat awhile nursing his knee, and then—­

“If you saw a man fallen into the water, what do you think would be the shortest way to prove to him that you had authority from heaven to pull him out?  Do you give it up?  Pulling him out would it not be, without more ado?”

“I should be happy enough to pull poor Vavasour out, if he would let me.  But till he believes that I can do it, how can I even begin!”

“How can you expect him to believe, if he has no proof?”

“There are proofs enough in the Bible and elsewhere, if he will but accept them.  If he refuses to examine into the credentials, the fault is his, not mine.  I really do not wish to be hard; but would not you do the same, if any one refused to employ you, because he chose to deny that you were a legally qualified practitioner?”