on it would make on the
unbeliever, if he were thus to meet the offer of his kindness. Half
turned, he stood hesitating.

"I have a passion for therapeutics," persisted the doctor; "and if I
can do any thing to ease the yoke upon the shoulders of my fellows--"

Mr. Drake did not hear the end of the sentence: he heard instead,
somewhere in his soul, a voice saying, "My yoke is easy, and my burden
is light." He _could_ not let Faber help him.

"Doctor, you have the great gift of a kind heart," he began, still half
turned from him.

"My heart is like other people's," interrupted Faber. "If a man wants
help, and I've got it, what more natural than that we should come
together?"

There was in the doctor an opposition to every thing that had if it were
but the odor of religion about it, which might well have suggested doubt
of his own doubt, and weakness buttressing itself with assertion But the
case was not so. What untruth there was in him was of another and more
subtle kind. Neither must it be supposed that he was a propagandist, a
proselytizer. Say nothing, and the doctor said nothing. Fire but a
saloon pistol, however, and off went a great gun in answer--with no
bravado, for the doctor was a gentleman.

"Mr. Faber," said the minister, now turning toward him, and looking him
full in the face, "if you had a friend whom you loved with all your
heart, would you be under obligation to a man who counted your
friendship a folly?"

"The cases are not parallel. Say the man merely did not believe your
friend was alive, and there could be no insult to either."

"If the denial of his being in life, opened the door to the greatest
wrongs that could be done him--and if that denial seemed to me to have
its source in some element of moral antagonism to him--_could_ I
accept--I put it to yourself, Mr. Faber--_could_ I accept assistance
from that man? Do not take it ill. You prize honesty; so do I: ten times
rather would I cease to live than accept life at the hand of an enemy to
my Lord and Master."

"I am very sorry, Mr. Drake," said the doctor; "but from your point of
view I suppose you are right. Good morning."

He turned Ruber from the minister's door, went off quickly, and entered
his own stable-yard just as the rector's carriage appeared at the
further end of the street.

CHAPTER III.

THE MANOR HOUSE.

Mr. Bevis drove up to the inn, threw the reins to his coachman, got
down, and helped his wife out of the