hat he did with
an unavowable purpose. Perhaps this was the real cause of his dislike
for the new pastor. After Mr. Furnival's initial appearance at the
chapel, they all three walked a little way together, and the
good-looking young man paid Norah compliments about her singing, and
held her hand and patted it. Nothing could have been more innoxious,
more completely ministerial; and yet Dale had felt that he would like
to take the clerical gentleman by the collar of his black coat and the
seat of his gray trousers, and send him sprawling over a quick-set
hedge into a ploughed field.

He knew then the nature of the poison that had crept insidiously into
his blood and was beginning to spread and rage with deadly power. He
fought against it bravely, he fought against it despairingly. He hoped
that chance would cure him, he prayed that heaven would cleanse him.

He would not believe that his ruin was irretrievable. That would be
too monstrous and absurd. Because, except for this expanding trouble,
everything inside him, all the main component parts that made up the
vast and still solid thinking organism which had been labeled for
external observers by the name of William Dale, remained quite
unchanged. His religious faith stood absolutely firm, was strengthened
rather than shaken; he regarded his wife with exactly the same
affection; he loved his children as much as, more than ever; only this
astounding dreadful new thing was added to him: he worshiped Norah.

In his struggles to free himself from the new mental growth, he had
turned to his children. Instinct seemed to say that from them and
through them should come an influence sufficiently potent to resist
temptation, however tremendous. He felt so proud of the boy. Billy was
never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened,
holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features
and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already--a real little
man. Dale took his son's hand in his, took Billy with him into the
granary, the hay loft, or across the fields, cut bits of willow and
showed how to make a whistle, took a hedge sparrow's nest and blew the
eggs; and the boy was proud and happy in such noble society, but he
could not exorcise the evil spell for his grand companion.

Nor could Rachel give freedom. Dale embraced his daughter with the
truest paternal fervor, pumping up sweet clean love from deep
unsullied wells, thinking honestly and