to pay Mr. Jones’s bill.  He had outgrown his former self, but this kind of misery it would be but deeper degradation to outgrow.  All before this had been but humiliation; this was shame.  Now first he knew what poverty was!  Had God forgotten him?  That could not be! that which could forget could not be God.  Did he not care then that such things should befall his creatures?  Were they but trifles in his eyes?  He ceased thinking, gave way to the feeling that God dealt hardly with him, and sat stupidly indulging a sense of grievance—­with self-pity, than which there is scarce one more childish or enfeebling in the whole circle of the emotions.  Was this what God had brought him nearer to Himself for? was this the end of a ministry in which he had, in some measure at least, denied himself and served God and his fellow?  He could bear any thing but shame!  That too could he have borne had he not been a teacher of religion—­one whose failure must brand him a hypocrite.  How mean it would sound—­what a reproach to the cause, that the congregational minister had run up a bill with a church-butcher which he was unable to pay!  It was the shame—­the shame he could not bear!  Ought he to have been subjected to it?

A humbler and better mood slowly dawned with unconscious change, and he began to ponder with himself wherein he had been misusing the money given him:  either he had been misusing it, or God had not given him enough, seeing it would not reach the end of his needs; but he could think only of the poor he had fed, and the child he had adopted, and surely God would overlook those points of extravagance.  Still, if he had not the means, he had not the right to do such things.  It might not in itself be wrong, but in respect of him it was as dishonest as if he had spent the money on himself—­not to mention that it was a thwarting of the counsel of God, who, if He had meant them to be so aided, would have sent him the money to spend upon them honestly.  His one excuse was that he could not have foreseen how soon his income was going to shrink to a third.  In future he would withhold his hand.  But surely he might keep the child?  Nay, having once taken her in charge, he must keep the child.  It was a comfort, there could be no doubt about that.  God had money enough, and certainly He would enable him to do that!  Only, why then did He bring him to such poverty?

So round in his mill he went, round and round again, and back to the old evil mood.  Either there was no God, or he was a hard-used man, whom his Master did not mind bringing to shame before his enemies!  He could not tell which would triumph the more—­the church-butcher over dissent, or the chapel-butcher over the church-butcher, and the pastor who had rebuked him for dishonesty!  His very soul was disquieted within him.  He rose at last with a tear trickling down his cheek, and walked to and fro in his garden.

Things went on nevertheless as if all was right with the world.  The Lythe flowed to the sea, and the silver-mailed salmon leaped into the more limpid air.  The sun shone gracious over all his kingdom, and his little praisers were loud in every bush.  The primroses, earth-born suns, were shining about in every border.  The sound of the great organ came from the grand old church, and the sound of many voices from the humble chapel.  Only, where was the heart of it all?