The curate was on the point of saying, “I am very glad to hear it,” when the warning Dorothy had given him returned to his mind, and with it the fear that the pastor was under a delusion—­that, as a rich man is sometimes not unnaturally seized with the mania of imagined poverty, so this poor man’s mental barometer had, from excess of poverty, turned its index right round again to riches.

“Oh!” he returned, lightly and soothingly, “perhaps it is not so bad as that.  You may have been misinformed.  There may be some mistake.”

“No, no!” returned the minister; “it is true, every word of it.  You shall see the lawyers’ letter.  Dorothy has it, I think.  My uncle was an ironmonger in a country town, got on, and bought a little bit of land in which he found iron.  I knew he was flourishing, but he was a churchman and a terrible Tory, and I never dreamed he would remember me.  There had been no communication between our family and his for many years.  He must have fancied me still a flourishing London minister, with a rich wife!  If he had had a suspicion of how sorely I needed a few pounds, I can not believe he would have left me a farthing.  He did not save his money to waste it on bread and cheese, I can fancy him saying.”

Although a look almost of despair kept coming and going upon his face, he lay so still, and spoke so quietly and collectedly, that Wingfold began to wonder whether there might not be some fact in his statement.  He did not well know what to say.

“When I heard the news from Dorothy—­she read the letter first,” Mr. Drake went on, “—­old fool that I was I was filled with such delight that, although I could not have said whether I believed or not, the very idea of the thing made me weep.  Alas!  Mr. Wingfold, I have had visions of God in which the whole world would not have seemed worth a salt tear!  And now!—­I jumped out of bed, and hurried on my clothes, but by the time I came to kneel at my bedside, God was away.  I could not speak a word to Him!  I had lost all the trouble that kept me crying after Him like a little child at his mother’s heels, the bond was broken and He was out of sight.  I tried to be thankful, but my heart was so full of the money, it lay like a stuffed bag.  But I dared not go even to my study till I had prayed.  I tramped up and down this little room, thinking more about paying my butcher’s bill than any thing else.  I would give him a silver snuff-box; but as to God and His goodness my heart felt like a stone; I could not lift it up.  All at once I saw how it was:  He had heard my prayers in anger!  Mr. Wingfold, the Lord has sent me this money as He sent the quails to the Israelites:  while it was yet, as it were, between my teeth, He smote me with hardness of heart.  O my God! how shall I live in the world with a hundred thousand pounds instead of my Father in heaven!  If it were only that He had hidden His face, I should be able to pray somehow!  He has given me over to the Mammon I was worshiping!  Hypocrite that I am! how often have I not pointed out to my people, while yet I dwelt in the land of Goshen, that to fear poverty was the same thing as to love money, for that both came of lack of faith in the living God!  Therefore has He taken from me the light of His countenance, which yet, Mr. Wingfold, with all my sins and shortcomings, yea, and my hypocrisy, is the all in all to me!”