It was very pleasant to Mr. Tryan to listen to the simple chat of the old man—­to walk in the shade of the incomparable orchard, and hear the story of the crops yielded by the red-streaked apple-tree, and the quite embarrassing plentifulness of the summer-pears—­to drink-in the sweet evening breath of the garden, as they sat in the alcove—­and so, for a short interval, to feel the strain of his pastoral task relaxed.

Perhaps he felt the return to that task through the dusty roads all the more painfully, perhaps something in that quiet shady home had reminded him of the time before he had taken on him the yoke of self-denial.  The strongest heart will faint sometimes under the feeling that enemies are bitter, and that friends only know half its sorrows.  The most resolute soul will now and then cast back a yearning look in treading the rough mountain-path, away from the greensward and laughing voices of the valley.  However it was, in the nine o’clock twilight that evening, when Mr. Tryan had entered his small study and turned the key in the door, he threw himself into the chair before his writing-table, and, heedless of the papers there, leaned his face low on his hand, and moaned heavily.

It is apt to be so in this life, I think.  While we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions—­’he is Evangelical and narrow’, or ‘Latitudinarian and Pantheistic’ or ’Anglican and supercilious’—­that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.

Chapter 9

Mr. Tryan showed no such symptoms of weakness on the critical Sunday.  He unhesitatingly rejected the suggestion that he should be taken to church in Mr. Landor’s carriage—­a proposition which that gentleman made as an amendment on the original plan, when the rumours of meditated insult became alarming.  Mr. Tryan declared he would have no precautions taken, but would simply trust in God and his good cause.  Some of his more timid friends thought this conduct rather defiant than wise, and reflecting that a mob has great talents for impromptu, and that legal redress is imperfect satisfaction for having one’s head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty they owed to their families to stay at home on Sunday evening.  These timorous persons, however, were in a small minority, and the generality of Mr. Tryan’s friends and hearers rather exulted in an opportunity of braving insult for the sake of a preacher to whom they were attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds.  Miss Pratt spoke of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and observed that the present crisis afforded an occasion for emulating their heroism even in these degenerate times; while less highly instructed persons, whose memories were not well stored with precedents, simply expressed their determination, as Mr. Jerome had done, to ‘stan’ by’ the preacher and his cause, believing it to be the ‘cause of God’.