Recovering himself after a minute or so—­“Almost thou persuades! me to be a Christian,” he said aloud, shaking his head remonstrantly at the distant church, while tears started to his busy, politely inquisitive eyes.

Then, striving by speech to bring his spirits to their accustomed playfulness and poise, he soliloquized thus, still aloud: 

“For, to be candid, what convincing argument can I advance, in the light of recent experience, to prove that Rousseau, my friends the Encyclopeadists, or even the great M. de Voltaire, were really wiser in their generation, truer lovers of the people and safer guides, than St. Benedict—­of blessed memory, since patron of learning and incidentally saviour of classic literature—­whose pious sons raised this most delectable edifice to God’s glory seven hundred years ago?—­The tower is considerably later than the transepts and the nave—­fifteenth century I take it,—­Upon my soul, I am half tempted to renounce my allegiance and to doubt whether our modern standards of civilization surpass, in the intelligent application of means to ends, those of these mediaeval cenobites, and whether we are saner philanthropists, deeper philosophers, more genial humanists than they!”

But here his discourse suffered mortifying interruption.  He became aware the pony stood stock-still in the middle of the road; and, turning its head, so that he beheld its pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip in disagreeable profile, regarded him with malevolent contempt out of its one sound eye, as who should say: 

“What’s the silly fellow trumpeting like this about?  Doesn’t the veriest noodle contrive to keep a quiet tongue in his head out on the highway?”

Sensible of a snub, Mr. Verity jerked at the reins and clapped his heels into the creature’s sides, as smartly as fatigue and native civility permitted, sending it forward at a jog-trot.  Nevertheless his soliloquy—­a silent one now—­continued, and that with notable consequences to others besides himself.

For his thought still dallied with the subject of the monastic life, as lived by those same pious Benedictines here in England long ago.  Its reasoned rejection of mundane agitations, its calm, its leisure, its profound and ardent scholarship were vastly to his taste,—­A man touching middle-age might do worse, surely, than spend his days between worship and learning, thus?—­He saw, and approved, its social office in offering sanctuary to the fugitive, alms to the poor, teaching to the ignorant, consolation to the sick and safe passage heavenward to the dying.  Saw, not without sympathy, its more jovial moments—­its good fellowship, shrewd and witty conversation, well salted stories—­whereat a man laughs slyly in his sleeve—­its good cheer, too, with feasts on holy-days and high-days, rich and succulent.—­And in this last connection, as he reflected, much was to be said for the geographical position of Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover and other savoury fowl.