’Captain Devereux, why will you doubt me?  I’ve spoken the truth.  I have already said I must not give your message; and you are not to suppose I dislike you, because I would fain have your faults mended.’

’Faults! have I?  To be sure I have.  So have you, more, Sir, and worse than I, maybe,’ cried Devereux, wild again; ’and you come here in your spiritual pride to admonish and to lecture, and to insult a miserable man, who’s better, perhaps, than yourself.  You’ve heard ill of me? you hear I sometimes drink maybe a glass too much—­who does not? you can drink a glass yourself, Sir; drink more, and show it less than I maybe; and you listen to every damned slander that any villain, to whose vices and idleness you pander with what you call your alms, may be pleased to invent, and you deem yourself charitable; save us from such charity! Charitable, and you refuse to deliver my miserable message:  hard-hearted Pharisee!’

It is plain poor Captain Devereux was not quite himself—­bitter, fierce, half-mad, and by no means so polite as he ought to have been.  Alas! as Job says, ’ye imagine to reprove words; and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind.’

‘Yes, hard-hearted, unrelenting Pharisee.’  The torrent roared on, and the wind was up; it was night and storm with poor Devereux.  ’You who pray every day—­oh—­damnable hypocrisy—­lead us not into temptation—­you neither care nor ask to what courses your pride and obstinacy are driving me—­your fellow-creature.’

’Ah, Captain Devereux, you are angry with me, and yet it’s not my doing; the man that is at variance with himself will hardly be at one with others.  You have said much to me that is unjust, and, perhaps, unseemly; but I won’t reproach you; your anger and trouble make wild work with your words.  When one of my people falls into sin, I ever find it is so through lack of prayer.  Ah!  Captain Devereux, have you not of late been remiss in the duty of private prayer?’

The captain laughed, not pleasantly, into the ashes in the grate.  But the doctor did not mind, and only said, looking upward—.

‘Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.’

There was kindness, and even tenderness, in the tone in which simple Dr. Walsingham spoke the appellative, brother; and it smote Devereux now, as sometimes happens with wayward fellows, and his better nature was suddenly moved.

’I’m sorry, Sir—­I am.  You’re too patient—­I’m very sorry; ’tis like an angel—­you’re noble, Sir, and I such an outcast.  I—­I wish you’d strike me, Sir—­you’re too kind and patient, Sir, and so pure—­and how have I spoken to you?  A trial, Sir, if you can forgive me—­one trial—­my vice—­you shall see me changed, a new man.  Oh, Sir, let me swear it.  I am, Sir—­I’m reformed; don’t believe me till you see it.  Oh! good Samaritan,—­don’t forsake me—­I’m all one wound.’