“By Jove!” said Faber to himself, “the spring weather has roused the worshiping instinct!  The clergy are awake to-day!  I had better look out, or it will soon be too hot for me.”

“I can’t look you in the face, doctor,” resumed the old man after a pause, “and believe what people say of you.  It can’t be that you don’t even believe there is a God?”

Faber would rather have said nothing; but his integrity he must keep fast hold of, or perish in his own esteem.

“If there be one,” he replied, “I only state a fact when I say He has never given me ground sufficient to think so.  You say yourselves He has favorites to whom He reveals Himself:  I am not one of them, and must therefore of necessity be an unbeliever.”

“But think, Mr. Faber—­if there should be a God, what an insult it is to deny Him existence.”

“I can’t see it,” returned the surgeon, suppressing a laugh.  “If there be such a one, would He not have me speak the truth?  Anyhow, what great matter can it be to Him that one should say he has never seen Him, and can’t therefore believe He is to be seen?  A god should be above that sort of pride.”

The minister was too much shocked to find any answer beyond a sad reproving shake of the head.  But he felt almost as if the hearing of such irreverence without withering retort, made him a party to the sin against the Holy Ghost.  Was he not now conferring with one of the generals of the army of Antichrist?  Ought he not to turn his back upon him, and walk into the house?  But a surge of concern for the frank young fellow who sat so strong and alive upon the great horse, broke over his heart, and he looked up at him pitifully.

Faber mistook the cause and object of his evident emotion.

“Come now, Mr. Drake, be frank with me,” he said.  “You are out of health; let me know what is the matter.  Though I’m not religious, I’m not a humbug, and only speak the truth when I say I should be glad to serve you.  A man must be neighborly, or what is there left of him?  Even you will allow that our duty to our neighbor is half the law, and there is some help in medicine, though I confess it is no science yet, and we are but dabblers.”

“But,” said Mr. Drake, “I don’t choose to accept the help of one who looks upon all who think with me as a set of humbugs, and regards those who deny every thing as the only honest men.”

“By Jove! sir, I take you for an honest man, or I should never trouble my head about you.  What I say of such as you is, that, having inherited a lot of humbug, you don’t know it for such, and do the best you can with it.”

“If such is your opinion of me—­and I have no right to complain of it in my own person—­I should just like to ask you one question about another,” said Mr. Drake:  “Do you in your heart believe that Jesus Christ was an impostor?”

“I believe, if the story about him be true, that he was a well-meaning man, enormously self-deceived.”