form, was clearly impossible. The only
question, and that a hard one, was, whether he could learn to discharge
those duties, or whether he must cease to be Rector of Carlingford. He
laboured over this problem in his solitude, and could find no answer.
"Things were different when we were young," was the only thought that
was any comfort to him, and that was poor consolation.

For one thing, it is hard upon the most magnanimous of men to confess
that he has undertaken an office for which he has not found himself
capable. Magnanimity was perhaps too lofty a word to apply to the
Rector; but he was honest to the bottom of his soul. As soon as he
became aware of what was included in the duties of his office, he must
perform them, or quit his post. But how to perform them? Can one _learn_
to convey consolation to the dying, to teach the ignorant, to comfort
the sorrowful? Are these matters to be acquired by study, like Greek
verbs or intricate measures? The Rector's heart said No. The Rector's
imagination unfolded before him, in all its halcyon blessedness, that
ancient paradise of All-Souls, where no such confounding demands ever
disturbed his beatitude. The good man groaned within himself over the
mortification, the labour, the sorrow, which this living was bringing
upon him. "If I had but let it pass to Morgan, who wanted to marry," he
said with self-reproach; and then suddenly bethought himself of his own
most innocent filial romance, and the pleasure his mother had taken in
her new house and new beginning of life. At that touch the tide flowed
back again. Could he dismiss her now to another solitary cottage in
Devonshire, her old home there being all dispersed and broken up, while
the house she had hoped to die in cast her out from its long-hoped-for
shelter? The Rector was quite overwhelmed by this new aggravation. If by
any effort of his own, any sacrifice to himself, he could preserve this
bright new home to his mother, would he shrink from that labour of love?

Nobody, however, knew anything about those conflicting thoughts which
rent his sober bosom. He preached next Sunday as usual, letting no trace
of the distressed, wistful anxiety to do his duty which now possessed
him gleam into his sermon. He looked down upon a crowd of unsympathetic,
uninterested faces, when he delivered that smooth little sermon, which
nobody cared much about, and which disturbed nobody. The only eyes which
in the smallest degree comprehended