Mr. Tryan had gone through the initiation of suffering:  it is no wonder, then, that Janet’s restoration was the work that lay nearest his heart; and that, weary as he was in body when he entered the vestry after the evening service, he was impatient to fulfil the promise of seeing her.  His experience enabled him to divine—­what was the fact—­that the hopefulness of the morning would be followed by a return of depression and discouragement; and his sense of the inward and outward difficulties in the way of her restoration was so keen, that he could only find relief from the foreboding it excited by lifting up his heart in prayer.  There are unseen elements which often frustrate our wisest calculations—­which raise up the sufferer from the edge of the grave, contradicting the prophecies of the clear-sighted physician, and fulfilling the blind clinging hopes of affection; such unseen elements Mr. Tryan called the Divine Will, and filled up the margin of ignorance which surrounds all our knowledge with the feelings of trust and resignation.  Perhaps the profoundest philosophy could hardly fill it up better.

His mind was occupied in this way as he was absently taking off his gown, when Mr. Landor startled him by entering the vestry and asking abruptly, ‘Have you heard the news about Dempster?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Tryan, anxiously; ‘what is it?’

’He has been thrown out of his gig in the Bridge Way, and he was taken up for dead.  They were carrying him home as we were coming to church, and I stayed behind to see what I could do.  I went in to speak to Mrs. Dempster, and prepare her a little, but she was not at home.  Dempster is not dead, however, he was stunned with the fall.  Pilgrim came in a few minutes, and he says the right leg is broken in two places.  It’s likely to be a terrible case, with his state of body.  It seems he was more drunk than usual, and they say he came along the Bridge Way flogging his horse like a madman, till at last it gave a sudden wheel, and he was pitched out.  The servants said they didn’t know where Mrs. Dempster was:  she had been away from home since yesterday morning; but Mrs. Raynor knew.’

‘I know where she is,’ said Mr. Tryan; ’but I think it will be better for her not to be told of this just yet.’

’Ah, that was what Pilgrim said, and so I didn’t go round to Mrs. Raynor’s.  He said it would be all the better if Mrs. Dempster could be kept out of the house for the present.  Do you know if anything new has happened between Dempster and his wife lately?  I was surprised to hear of her being at Paddiford Church this morning.’

’Yes, something has happened; but I believe she is anxious that the particulars of his behaviour towards her should not be known.  She is at Mrs. Pettifer’s—­there is no reason for concealing that, since what has happened to her husband; and yesterday, when she was in very deep trouble, she sent for me.  I was very thankful she did so:  I believe a great change of feeling has begun in her.  But she is at present in that excitable state of mind—­she has been shaken by so many painful emotions during the last two days, that I think it would be better, for this evening at least, to guard her from a new shock, if possible.  But I am going now to call upon her, and I shall see how she is.’