course I know it, but, naturally, these things aren't to be taken
quite literally.'

'It is clearly written. What makes you say it is not to be taken
literally?'

Mr Evans shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

'Why, don't you see it would be impossible? The world couldn't go on.
How do you expect your children to live if you give this money away?'

'"Look at the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin;
yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these."'....

'Oh, my dear sir, you make me lose my patience. You're full of the
hell-fire platitudes of a park spouter, and you think it's religion....
I tell you all these things are allegorical. Don't you understand that?
You mustn't carry them out to the letter. They are not meant to be taken
in that way.'

Mr Clinton smiled a little pitifully at the curate.

'And think of yourself--one must think of oneself. "God helps those who
help themselves." How are you going to exist when this little money of
yours is gone? You'll simply have to go to the workhouse.... It's
absurd, I tell you.'

Mr Clinton took no further notice of the curate, but he broke into a
loud chant,--

'"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up
for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal."' Then,
turning on the unhappy curate, he stretched out his arm and pointed his
finger at him. 'Last Sunday,' he said, 'I 'eard you read those very
words from the chancel steps. Go! go! I tell you, go! You are a bad man,
a wolf in sheep's clothing--go!' Mr Clinton walked up to him
threateningly, and the curate, with a gasp of astonishment and
indignation, fled from the room.

He met Mrs Clinton outside.

'I can't do anything with him at all,' he said angrily. 'I've never
heard such things in my life. He's either mad or he's got into the hands
of the Dissenters. That's the only explanation I can offer.'

Then, to quiet his feelings, he called on a wealthy female parishioner,
with whom he was a great favourite, because she thought him 'such a
really pious man,' and it was not till he had drunk two cups of tea that
he recovered his equilibrium.

XI

Mrs Clinton was at her wit's end. Her husband had sold out his shares,
and the money was lying at the bank ready to be put to its destined use.
Visions of