was admirably calculated, with her narrow, meat-tea proclivities, to embitter the amiable SILLIMERE’s existence, and to produce, in conjunction with him, that storm and stress, that perpetual clashing of two estimates without which no modern religious novel could be written, and which not even her pale virginal grace of look and form could subdue.  That is a long sentence, but, ah! how short is a merely mortal sentence, with its tyrannous full stop, against the immeasurable background of the December stars, by whose light Bob was now walking, with heightened colour, along the vast avenue that led to Wendover Hall, the residence of the ogre Squire.

CHAPTER IV.

The Squire was at home.  On the door-step Bob was greeted by Mrs. FARCEY, the Squire’s sister.  She looked at him in her bird-like way.  At other times she was elf-like, and played tricks with a lace handkerchief.

“You know,” she whispered to Bob, “we’re all mad here.  I’m mad, and he,” she continued, bobbing diminutively towards the Squire’s study-door, “he’s mad too—­as mad as a hatter.”

Before Bob had time to answer this strange remark, the study-door flew open, and Squire MUREWELL stepped forth.  He rapped out an oath or two, which Bob noticed with faint politeness, and ordered his visitor to enter.  The Squire was rough—­very rough; but he had studied hard in Germany.

“So you’re the young fool,” he observed, “who intends to tackle me.  Ha, ha, that’s a good joke.  I’ll have you round my little finger in two twos.  Here,” he went on gruffly, “take this book of mine in your right hand.  Throw your eyes up to the ceiling.”  Robert, wishing to conciliate him, did as he desired.  The eyes stuck there, and looked down with a quick lovable look on the two men below.  “Now,” said the Squire, “you can’t see.  Pronounce the word ‘testimony’ twice, slowly.  Think of a number, multiply by four, subtract the Thirty-nine Articles, add a Sunday School and a packet of buns.  Result, you’re a freethinker.”  And with that he bowed Bob out of the room.

CHAPTER V.

A terrible storm was raging in the Rector’s breast as he strode, regardless of the cold, along the verdant lanes of Wendover.  “Fool that I was!” he muttered, pressing both hands convulsively to his sides.  “Why did I not pay more attention to arithmetic at school?  I could have crushed him, but I was ignorant.  Was that result right?” He reflected awhile mournfully, but he could bring it out in no other way.  “I must go through with it to the bitter end,” he concluded, “and Catherine must be told.”  But the thought of Catherine knitting quietly at home, while she read Fox’s Book of Martyrs, with a tender smile on her thin lips, unmanned him.  He sobbed bitterly.  The front-door of the Rectory was open.  He walked in.—­The rest is soon told.  He resigned the Rectory, and made a brand-new religion.  Catherine frowned, but it was useless.  Thereupon she gave him cold bacon for lunch during a whole fortnight, and the brave young soul which had endured so much withered under this blight.  And thus, acknowledging the novelist’s artistic necessity, Robert died.—­[The end.]