omething of the ridiculous to your
eyes in seeing me like this. But--I must put up with that. ... I
heard you had gone away; nobody knew where. Tess, you wonder why I
have followed you?"

"I do, rather; and I would that you had not, with all my heart!"

"Yes--you may well say it," he returned grimly, as they moved onward
together, she with unwilling tread. "But don't mistake me; I beg
this because you may have been led to do so in noticing--if you did
notice it--how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was
but a momentary faltering; and considering what you have been to me,
it was natural enough. But will helped me through it--though perhaps
you think me a humbug for saying it--and immediately afterwards I
felt that of all persons in the world whom it was my duty and desire
to save from the wrath to come--sneer if you like--the woman whom I
had so grievously wronged was that person. I have come with that
sole purpose in view--nothing more."

There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: "Have
you saved yourself? Charity begins at home, they say."

"_I_ have done nothing!" said he indifferently. "Heaven, as I have
been telling my hearers, has done all. No amount of contempt that
you can pour upon me, Tess, will equal what I have poured upon
myself--the old Adam of my former years! Well, it is a strange
story; believe it or not; but I can tell you the means by which my
conversion was brought about, and I hope you will be interested
enough at least to listen. Have you ever heard the name of the
parson of Emminster--you must have done do?--old Mr Clare; one of the
most earnest of his school; one of the few intense men left in the
Church; not so intense as the extreme wing of Christian believers
with which I have thrown in my lot, but quite an exception among the
Established clergy, the younger of whom are gradually attenuating the
true doctrines by their sophistries, till they are but the shadow of
what they were. I only differ from him on the question of Church and
State--the interpretation of the text, 'Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord'--that's all. He is one who, I firmly
believe, has been the humble means of saving more souls in this
country than any other man you can name. You have heard of him?"

"I have," she said.

"He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of
some missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I w