g that is told him, and who should know the facts of
the case better than his wife? Poor fellow! He has done his best, but
what does a fish's best come to when the fish is out of water? He has
left meat and wine--that he can do; he will call again and will leave
more meat and wine; day after day he trudges over the same plover-haunted
fields, and listens at the end of his walk to the same agony of
forebodings, which day after day he silences, but does not remove, till
at last a merciful weakness renders the sufferer careless of her future,
and Theobald is satisfied that her mind is now peacefully at rest in
Jesus.

CHAPTER XVI

He does not like this branch of his profession--indeed he hates it--but
will not admit it to himself. The habit of not admitting things to
himself has become a confirmed one with him. Nevertheless there haunts
him an ill defined sense that life would be pleasanter if there were no
sick sinners, or if they would at any rate face an eternity of torture
with more indifference. He does not feel that he is in his element. The
farmers look as if they were in their element. They are full-bodied,
healthy and contented; but between him and them there is a great gulf
fixed. A hard and drawn look begins to settle about the corners of his
mouth, so that even if he were not in a black coat and white tie a child
might know him for a parson.

He knows that he is doing his duty. Every day convinces him of this more
firmly; but then there is not much duty for him to do. He is sadly in
want of occupation. He has no taste for any of those field sports which
were not considered unbecoming for a clergyman forty years ago. He does
not ride, nor shoot, nor fish, nor course, nor play cricket. Study, to
do him justice, he had never really liked, and what inducement was there
for him to study at Battersby? He reads neither old books nor new ones.
He does not interest himself in art or science or politics, but he sets
his back up with some promptness if any of them show any development
unfamiliar to himself. True, he writes his own sermons, but even his
wife considers that his _forte_ lies rather in the example of his life
(which is one long act of self-devotion) than in his utterances from the
pulpit. After breakfast he retires to his study; he cuts little bits out
of the Bible and gums them with exquisite neatness by the side of other
little bits; this he calls making a Harmony of the Old and N