so if they have any susceptibilities left, probably
he will tread upon their toes--an art in which I never knew his equal.
However, I always loved Bastin, perhaps because no one else did, a fact
of which he remained totally unconscious, or perhaps because of his
brutal way of telling one what he conceived to be the truth, which, as
he had less imagination than a dormouse, generally it was not. For if
the truth is a jewel, it is one coloured and veiled by many different
lights and atmospheres.

It only remains to add that he was learned in his theological fashion
and that among his further peculiarities were the slow, monotonous
voice in which he uttered his views in long sentences, and his total
indifference to adverse argument however sound and convincing.

My other friend, Bickley, was a person of a quite different character.
Like Bastin, he was learned, but his tendencies faced another way.
If Bastin's omnivorous throat could swallow a camel, especially
a theological camel, Bickley's would strain at the smallest gnat,
especially a theological gnat. The very best and most upright of men,
yet he believed in nothing that he could not taste, see or handle. He
was convinced, for instance, that man is a brute-descended accident and
no more, that what we call the soul or the mind is produced by a certain
action of the grey matter of the brain; that everything apparently
inexplicable has a perfectly mundane explanation, if only one could find
it; that miracles certainly never did happen, and never will; that all
religions are the fruit of human hopes and fears and the most convincing
proof of human weakness; that notwithstanding our infinite variations we
are the subjects of Nature's single law and the victims of blind, black
and brutal chance.

Such was Bickley with his clever, well-cut face that always reminded
me of a cameo, and thoughtful brow; his strong, capable hands and his
rather steely mouth, the mere set of which suggested controversy of
an uncompromising kind. Naturally as the Church had claimed Bastin, so
medicine claimed Bickley.

Now as it happened the man who succeeded my father as vicar of Fulcombe
was given a better living and went away shortly after I had purchased
the place and with it the advowson. Just at this time also I received
a letter written in the large, sprawling hand of Bastin from whom I
had not heard for years. It went straight to the point, saying that he,
Bastin, had seen in a Church pa