‘And what good did his depth ever do to him,’ indignantly cried Mrs. Dusautoy, ’till that dear good wife of his took him in hand?  Don’t you remember what a log he was when first we came—­how I used to say he gave you subscriptions to get rid of you.’

’Well, well, Fanny, what’s the use of recollecting all our foolish first impressions.  I always told you he was the most able man in the parish.’

‘Fanny’ laughed merrily at this piece of sagacity, as she said ’Ay, the most able and the least practicable; and the best of it is, that his wife has not the most distant idea that she has been the making of him.  She nearly quarrelled with me for hinting it.  She would have it that “Edmund” had it all in him, and had only recovered his health and spirits.’

And, indeed, it was no wonder she was happy.  This step taken of free will by Mr. Kendal, was an evidence not only of a powerful reasoning intellect bowed to an act of simple faith but of a victory over the false shame that had always been a part of his nature.  Nor did it apparently cost him as much as his consent to Sophy’s admission into the Church; the first effort had been the greatest, and he was now too much taken up with deep thoughts of devotion to be sensitive as to the eyes and remarks of the world.  The very resolution to bend in faithful obedience to a rite usually belonging to early youth and not obviously enforced to human reason, nor made an express condition of salvation, was as a pledge that he would strive to walk for the future in the path of self-denying obedience.  Who that saw the manly well-knit form kneeling among the slight youthful ones around, and the thoughtful, sorrow-marked brow bowed down beneath the Apostolic hand, could doubt that such faith and such humble obedience would surely be endowed with a full measure of the Spirit of Ghostly Might, to lead him on in his battle with himself?  Those young ones needed the ‘sevenfold veil between them and the fires of youth,’ but surely the freshening and renewing came most blessedly to the man weary already with sin and woe, and tired out alike with himself and the world, because he had lived to himself alone.

CHAPTER XIII.

Old Mr. Pringle never stirred beyond his parlour, and was invisible to every one, except his housekeeper and doctor, but his tall, square, curtained pew was jealously locked up, and was a grievance to the vicar, who having been foiled in several attempts, was meditating a fresh one, if, as he told his wife, he could bring his churchwarden up to the scratch, when one Sunday morning the congregation was electrified by the sound of a creak and a shake, and beheld a stout hale sunburnt gentleman, fighting with the disused door, and finally gaining the victory by strength of hand, admitting himself and a boy among the dust and the cobwebs.

Had Mr. Pringle, or rather his housekeeper, made a virtue of necessity? and if so, who could it be?