is talents might have free
play. To Honoria, on the other hand, it appeared only as a very
fierce, coarse, and impertinent satire, which had nearly killed her
father. True, there was not a thought in it which had not at some
time or other crossed her own mind; but that made her dislike all
the more to see those thoughts put into plain English. That very
intense tenderness and excitability which made her toil herself
among the poor, and had called out both her admiration of Tregarva
and her extravagant passion at his danger, made her also shrink with
disgust from anything which thrust on her a painful reality, which
she could not remedy. She was a staunch believer, too, in that
peculiar creed which allows every one to feel for the poor, except
themselves, and considers that to plead the cause of working-men is,
in a gentleman, the perfection of virtue, but in a working-man
himself, sheer high treason. And so beside her father's sick-bed
she thought of the keeper only as a scorpion whom she had helped to
warm into life; and sighing assent to her mother, when she said,
'That wretch, and he seemed so pious and so obliging! who would have
dreamt that he was such a horrid Radical?' she let him vanish from
her mind and out of Whitford Priors, little knowing the sore weight
of manly love he bore with him.

As soon as Lancelot could leave the Priory, he hastened home to find
Tregarva. The keeper had packed up all his small possessions and
brought them down to Lower Whitford, through which the London coach
passed. He was determined to go to London and seek his fortune. He
talked of turning coal-heaver, Methodist preacher, anything that
came to hand, provided that he could but keep independence and a
clear conscience. And all the while the man seemed to be struggling
with some great purpose,--to feel that he had a work to do, though
what it was, and how it was to be done, he did not see.

'I am a tall man,' he said, 'like Saul the son of Kish; and I am
going forth, like him, sir, to find my father's asses. I doubt I
shan't have to look far for some of them.'

'And perhaps,' said Lancelot, laughing, 'to find a kingdom.'

'May be so, sir. I have found one already, by God's grace, and I'm
much mistaken if I don't begin to see my way towards another.'

'And what is that?'

'The kingdom of God on earth, sir, as well as in heaven. Come it
must, sir, and come it will some day.'

Lancel