p over the precipice.'

'Captain Devereux, why will you doubt me? I've spoken the truth. I have
already said I must not give your message; and you are not to suppose I
dislike you, because I would fain have your faults mended.'

'Faults! have I? To be sure I have. So have _you, more,_ Sir, and
_worse_ than I, maybe,' cried Devereux, wild again; 'and you come here
in your spiritual pride to admonish and to lecture, and to _insult_ a
miserable man, who's better, perhaps, than yourself. You've heard ill of
me? you hear I sometimes drink maybe a glass too much--who does not? you
can drink a glass yourself, Sir; drink more, and show it less than I
maybe; and you listen to every damned slander that any villain, to whose
vices and idleness you pander with what you call your alms, may be
pleased to invent, and you deem yourself charitable; save us from such
charity! _Charitable_, and you refuse to deliver my miserable message:
hard-hearted Pharisee!'

It is plain poor Captain Devereux was not quite himself--bitter, fierce,
half-mad, and by no means so polite as he ought to have been. Alas! as
Job says, 'ye imagine to reprove words; and the speeches of one that is
desperate, which are as wind.'

'Yes, hard-hearted, unrelenting Pharisee.' The torrent roared on, and
the wind was up; it was night and storm with poor Devereux. 'You who
pray every day--oh--damnable hypocrisy--lead us not into temptation--you
neither care nor ask to what courses your pride and obstinacy are
driving me--your fellow-creature.'

'Ah, Captain Devereux, you are angry with me, and yet it's not my doing;
the man that is at variance with himself will hardly be at one with
others. You have said much to me that is unjust, and, perhaps, unseemly;
but I won't reproach you; your anger and trouble make wild work with
your words. When one of my people falls into sin, I ever find it is so
through lack of prayer. Ah! Captain Devereux, have you not of late been
remiss in the duty of private prayer?'

The captain laughed, not pleasantly, into the ashes in the grate. But
the doctor did not mind, and only said, looking upward--.

'Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.'

There was kindness, and even tenderness, in the tone in which simple Dr.
Walsingham spoke the appellative, brother; and it smote Devereux now,
as sometimes happens with wayward fellows, and his better nature was
suddenly moved.

'I'm _sorry_, Sir--I am. You're too patient--I'm _