roused him; the wondering silence in which he
stood looking at the ministrations of Lucy Wodehouse and the young
curate; the tearful sympathetic woman as helpless as himself, who had
stood beside him in that sick chamber, came back upon his recollection
strangely, amidst the repose, not so blessed as heretofore, of All-Souls.
The good man had found out that secret of discontent which most men find
out a great deal earlier than he. Something better, though it might be
sadder, harder, more calamitous, was in this world. Was there ever human
creature yet that had not something in him more congenial to the thorns
and briars outside to be conquered, than to that mild paradise for which
our primeval mother disqualified all her children? When he went back to
his dear cloisters, good Mr Proctor felt that sting: a longing for the
work he had rejected stirred in him--a wistful recollection of the
sympathy he had not sought.

And if in future years any traveller, if travellers still fall upon
adventures, should light upon a remote parsonage in which an elderly
embarrassed Rector, with a mild wife in dove-coloured dresses, toils
painfully after his duty, more and more giving his heart to it, more and
more finding difficult expression for the unused faculty, let him be
sure that it is the late Rector of Carlingford, self-expelled out of the
uneasy paradise, setting forth untimely, yet not too late, into the
laborious world.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Contemporary spellings have been retained even when inconsistent or
unusual. A small number of obvious typographical errors have been
corrected, and missing punctuation has been silently added

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