more or less of such division? But, if you will have
patience with me, sir, I am bold to say, believing in the force and
final victory of the truth, there will be more unity by and by."

"I don't doubt it. But come now!--you are a thoroughly good
fellow--that, a blind horse could see in the dimmits--and I'm
accountable for the parish--couldn't you draw it a little milder, you
know? couldn't you make it just a little less peculiar--only the way of
putting it, I mean--so that it should look a little more like what they
have been used to? I'm only suggesting the thing, you know--dictating
nothing, on my soul, Mr. Wingfold. I am sure that, whatever you do, you
will act according to your own conscience, otherwise I should not
venture to say a word, lest I should lead you wrong."

"If you will allow me," said the curate, "I will tell you my whole
story; and then if you should wish it, I will resign my curacy, without
saying a word more than that my rector thinks it better. Neither in
private shall I make a single remark in a different spirit."

"Let me hear," said the rector.

"Then if you will please take this chair, that I may know that I am not
wearying you bodily at least."

The rector did as he was requested, laid his head back, crossed his
legs, and folded his hands over his worn waist-coat: he was not one of
the neat order of parsons; he had a not unwholesome disregard of his
outermost man, and did not know when he was shabby. Without an atom of
pomposity or air rectorial, he settled himself to listen.

Condensing as much as he could, Wingfold told him how through great
doubt, and dismal trouble of mind, he had come to hope in God, and to
see that there was no choice for a man but to give himself, heart, and
soul, and body, to the love, and will, and care of the Being who had
made him. He could no longer, he said, regard his profession as any
thing less than a call to use every means and energy at his command for
the rousing of men and women from that spiritual sleep and moral
carelessness in which he had himself been so lately sunk.

"I don't want to give up my curacy," he concluded. "Still less do I want
to leave Glaston, for there are here some whom I teach and some who
teach me. In all that has given ground for complaint, I have seemed to
myself to be but following the dictates of common sense; if you think me
wrong, I have no justification to offer. We both love God,----"

"How do you know that?" interrupt