“No, but he gave them a lesson concerning avarice, and left that to work.  I don’t suppose any body is unjust for love of injustice.  I don’t understand the pure devilish very well—­though I have glimpses into it.  Your way must be different from our Lord’s in form, that it may be the same in spirit:  you have to work with money; His father had given Him none.  In His mission He was not to use all means—­only the best.  But even He did not attack individuals to make them do right; and if you employ your money in doing justice to the oppressed and afflicted, to those shorn of the commonest rights of humanity, it will be the most powerful influence of all to wake the sleeping justice in the dull hearts of other men.  It is the business of any body who can, to set right what any body has set wrong.  I will give you a special instance, which has been in my mind all the time.  Last spring—­and it was the same the spring before, my first in Glaston—­the floods brought misery upon every family in what they call the Pottery here.  How some of them get through any wet season I can not think; but Faber will tell you what a multitude of sore throats, cases of croup, scarlet-fever, and diphtheria, he has to attend in those houses every spring and autumn.  They are crowded with laborers and their families, who, since the railway came, have no choice but live there, and pay a much heavier rent in proportion to their accommodation than you or I do—­in proportion to the value of the property, immensely heavier.  Is it not hard?  Men are their brothers’ keepers indeed—­but it is in chains of wretchedness they keep them.  Then again—­I am told that the owner of these cottages, who draws a large yearly sum from them, and to the entreaties of his tenants for really needful repairs, gives nothing but promises, is one of the most influential attendants of a chapel you know, where, Sunday after Sunday, the gospel is preached.  If this be true, here again is a sad wrong:  what can those people think of religion so represented?”

“I am a sinful man,” exclaimed the pastor.  “That Barwood is one of the deacons.  He is the owner of the chapel as well as the cottages.  I ought to have spoken to him years ago.—­But,” he cried, starting to his feet, “the property is for sale!  I saw it in the paper this very morning!  Thank God!”—­He caught up his hat.—­“I shall have no choice but buy the chapel too,” he added, with a queer, humorous smile; “—­it is part of the property.—­Come with me, my dear sir.  We must see to it directly.  You will speak:  I would rather not appear in the affair until the property is my own; but I will buy those houses, please God, and make them such as His poor sons and daughters may live in without fear or shame.”

The curate was not one to give a cold bath to enthusiasm.  They went out together, got all needful information, and within a month the title-deeds were in Mr. Drake’s possession.

When the rumor reached the members of his late congregation that he had come in for a large property, many called to congratulate him, and such congratulations are pretty sure to be sincere.  But he was both annoyed and amused when—­it was in the morning during business hours—­Dorothy came and told him, not without some show of disgust, that a deputation from the church in Cow-lane was below.