At the death of his younger boy, Maurice, he suffered a blow which had results more abiding than the melancholy wherewith for a year or two his genial nature was overshadowed.  From that day onwards he was never wholly at ease among the pursuits which had been wont to afford him an unfailing resource against whatever troubles.  He could no longer accept and disregard, in a spirit of cheerful faith, those difficulties science was perpetually throwing in his way.  The old smile of kindly tolerance had still its twofold meaning, but it was more evidently a disguise of indecision, and not seldom touched with sadness.  Martin’s life was still one of postponed debate, but he could not regard the day when conclusions would be demanded of him as indefinitely remote.  Desiring to dwell in the familiar temporary abode, his structure of incongruities and facile reconcilements, he found it no longer weather-proof.  The times were shaking his position with earthquake after earthquake.  His sons (for he suspected that Louis was hardly less emancipated than Buckland) stood far aloof from him, and must in private feel contemptuous of his old-fashioned beliefs.  In Sidwell, however, he had a companion more and more indispensable, and he could not imagine that~ her~ faith would ever give way before the invading spirit of agnosticism.  Happily she was no mere pietist.  Though he did not quite understand her attitude towards Christianity, he felt assured that Sidwell had thought deeply and earnestly of religion in all its aspects, and it was a solace to know that she found no difficulty in recognising the large claims of science.  For all this, he could not deliberately seek her confidence, or invite her to a discussion of religious subjects.  Some day, no doubt, a talk of that kind would begin naturally between them, and so strong was his instinctive faith in Sidwell that he looked forward to this future communing as to a certain hope of peace.

That a figure such as Godwin Peak, a young man of vigorous intellect, preparing to devote his life to the old religion, should excite Mr. Warricombe’s interest was of course to be anticipated; and it seemed probable enough that Peak, exerting all the force of his character and aided by circumstances, might before long convert this advantage to a means of ascendency over the less self-reliant nature.  But here was no instance of a dotard becoming the easy prey of a scientific Tartufe.  Martin’s intellect had suffered no decay.  His hale features and dignified bearing expressed the mind which was ripened by sixty years of pleasurable activity, and which was learning to regard with steadier view the problems it had hitherto shirked.  He could not change the direction nature had given to his thoughts, and prepossession would in some degree obscure his judgment where the merits and trustworthiness of a man in Peak’s circumstances called for scrutiny; but self-respect guarded him against vulgar artifices, and a fine sensibility made it improbable that he would become the victim of any man in whom base motives predominated.