“Ah, Mr. Wingfold!” cried the minister, “God has forsaken me.  If He had only forgotten me, I could have borne that, I think; for, as Job says, the time would have come when He would have had a desire to the work of His hands.  But He has turned His back upon me, and taken His free Spirit from me.  He has ceased to take His own way, to do His will with me, and has given me my way and my will.  Sit down, Mr. Wingfold.  You can not comfort me, but you are a true servant of God, and I will tell you my sorrow.  I am no friend to the church, as you know, but—­”

“So long as you are a friend of its Head, that goes for little with me,” said the curate.  “But if you will allow me, I should like to say just one word on the matter.”

He wished to try what a diversion of thought might do; not that he foolishly desired to make him forget his trouble, but that he knew from experience any gap might let in comfort.

“Say on, Mr. Wingfold.  I am a worm and no man.”

“It seems, then, to me a mistake for any community to spend precious energy upon even a just finding of fault with another.  The thing is, to trim the lamp and clean the glass of our own, that it may be a light to the world.  It is just the same with communities as with individuals.  The community which casts if it be but the mote out of its own eye, does the best thing it can for the beam in its neighbor’s.  For my part, I confess that, so far as the clergy form and represent the Church of England, it is and has for a long time been doing its best—­not its worst, thank God—­to serve God and Mammon.”

“Ah! that’s my beam!” cried the minister.  “I have been serving Mammon assiduously.  I served him not a little in the time of my prosperity, with confidence and show, and then in my adversity with fears and complaints.  Our Lord tells us expressly that we are to take no thought for the morrow, because we can not serve God and Mammon.  I have been taking thought for a hundred morrows, and that not patiently, but grumbling in my heart at His dealings with me.  Therefore now He has cast me off.”

“How do you know that He has cast you off?” asked the curate.

“Because He has given me my own way with such a vengeance.  I have been pulling, pulling my hand out of His, and He has let me go, and I lie in the dirt.”

“But you have not told me your grounds for concluding so.”

“Suppose a child had been crying and fretting after his mother for a spoonful of jam,” said the minister, quite gravely, “and at last she set him down to a whole pot—­what would you say to that?”

“I should say she meant to give him a sharp lesson, perhaps a reproof as well—­certainly not that she meant to cast him off,” answered Wingfold, laughing.  “But still I do not understand.”

“Have you not heard then?  Didn’t Dorothy tell you?”

“She has told me nothing.”

“Not that my old uncle has left me a hundred thousand pounds and more?”