“I beg your pardon.  Your very presence will be of use.  Nothing yet given him or done for him by his fellow, ever did any man so much good as the recognition of the brotherhood by the common signs of friendship and sympathy.  The best good of given money depends on the degree to which it is the sign of that friendship and sympathy.  Our Lord did not make little of visiting:  ’I was sick, and ye visited me.’  ’Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’  Of course, if the visitor goes professionally and not humanly,—­as a mere religious policeman, that is—­whether he only distributes tracts with condescending words, or gives money liberally because he thinks he ought, the more he does not go the better, for he only does harm to them and himself too.”

“But I cannot pretend to feel any of the interest you consider essential:  why then should I go?”

“To please me, your friend.  That is a good human reason.  You need not say a word—­you must not pretend anything.  Go as my companion, not as their visitor.  Will you come?”

“I suppose I must.”

“You must, then.  Thank you.  You will help me.  I have seldom a companion.”

So when the storm-fit had abated for the moment, we hurried to the vicarage, had a good though hasty lunch, (to which I was pleased to see Mr Stoddart do justice; for it is with man as with beast, if you want work out of him, he must eat well—­and it is the one justification of eating well, that a man works well upon it,) and set out for the village.  The rain was worse than ever.  There was no sleet, and the wind was not cold, but the windows of heaven were opened, and if the fountains of the great deep were not broken up, it looked like it, at least, when we reached the bridge and saw how the river had spread out over all the low lands on its borders.  We could not talk much as we went along.

“Don’t you find some pleasure in fighting the wind?” I said.

“I have no doubt I should,” answered Mr Stoddart, “if I thought I were going to do any good; but as it is, to tell the truth, I would rather be by my own fire with my folio Dante on the reading desk.”

“Well, I would rather help the poorest woman in creation, than contemplate the sufferings of the greatest and wickedest,” I said.

“There are two things you forget,” returned Mr Stoddart.  “First, that the poem of Dante is not nearly occupied with the sufferings of the wicked; and next, that what I have complained of in this expedition—­which as far as I am concerned, I would call a wild goose chase, were it not that it is your doing and not mine—­is that I am not going to help anybody.”

“You would have the best of the argument entirely,” I replied, “if your expectation was sure to turn out correct.”

As I spoke, we had come within a few yards of the Tomkins’s cottage, which lay low down from the village towards the river, and I saw that the water was at the threshold.  I turned to Mr Stoddart, who, to do him justice, had not yet grumbled in the least.