“What! she hasn’t had a blessed thing to-day.  We had nothing for her.”

Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the table.  “Let the girl come in, and eat,” said he.  “I shall send you some meat from the village.  Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your wickedness.  I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were sorry.  It would have looked well, and I should have liked it.  You put it out of my power to help you.  It is most distressing to see you both going headlong to destruction.  May you live to repent!  I shall see you again this evening, and I will speak to you alone.  Come, Mr Stukely, our time is getting short.”

The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected.  I looked at him, and could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had at first imagined him.

We pursued our way towards the village.

“There, sir,” said the minister in a quick tone of voice, “what is the beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that man?  What have they to do at all with man’s morality?  Had those people never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable, more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper?  That man wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of mankind, to become a monster.  His passions and his vices are as wilful and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great city.  They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief—­and there is the difference.”

I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued in a milder strain.

“I may be, after all, weak and inefficient.  Doubtless great delicacy and caution are required.  Heavenly truths are not to be administered to these as to the refined and willing.  The land must be ploughed, or it is useless to sow the seed.  Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?”

Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village—­the prettiest of the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to.  Here he tapped softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to admit him.

“Well, Mary,” said the minister, glancing round the room—­a clean and happy-looking room it was—­“where’s Michael?”

“He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett.  He couldn’t rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to church so long as he bore malice.  He won’t be long, sir.”

Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so steady now.

“Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased.  How is work with him?”

“He has enough to do, to carry him to the month’s end, sir.”

“Then at the month’s end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage.  I have something for him there.  But we can wait till then.  Have you seen the itinerary preacher since?”