“That is one way of looking at it, no doubt,” he said slowly; “and I hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His service.  But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him—­ something to which people may point and say, ‘he did it.’  There was my book, now:  for years I thought that was to be my work.  But God thought otherwise and (to correct my pride, perhaps) chose this task instead.  To set a small forsaken country church in order and make it worthy of His presence—­that is not the mission I should have chosen.  But so be it:  I have accepted it.  Only, to let others step in at the last and finish even this—­I say He must forgive me, but I cannot.”

“Your book—­you can go back to it and finish it.”

“I have burnt it.”

“Dad!”

“I burned it.  I had to.  It was a temptation to me, and until I lifted it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands the surrender was not complete.”

Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity.  And as he pitied suddenly he understood his father.

“It had to be complete?”

“Either the book or the surrender.  My boy”—­and in his voice there echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar, who abhors imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either perfect or complete; “it is different with you.  I borrowed you, so to say, for the time.  Without you I must have failed; but this was never your work.  For myself, I have learnt my lessons; but, please God, you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build.”

Taffy had lost his shyness now.  He laid a hand on his father’s sleeve.

“We will go on then.”

“Yes, we will go on.”

“And Jacky?  Where has he been?  I haven’t seen him since the Squire died.”

Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled letter.  It ran:—­

“Dear friend,—­this is to say that you will not see me no more.  The dear Lord tells me that I have made a cauch of it.  He don’t say how, all He says is go and do better somewheres else.

“Seems to me a terrable thing to think Religion can be bad for any man.  It have done me such powars of good.  The late Moyle esq he was like a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no matter what.  Dear friend I pored Praise into him and it come out Prayer and all for him self.  But the dear Lord says I was to blame as much as Moyle esq so must do better next time but feel terrable timid.

“My respects to Masr Taffy.  Dear friend I done my best I come like Nicodemus by night.  Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for.  When they praise God forget diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so no more at present from

     “Yours respffly

     “J.  Pascoe.”

After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen Humility kept rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans and kettles on the hearth.  This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up into his mother’s eyes.