ey occurred to him. Grey was
in residence as a bachelor, attending divinity lectures, and
preparing for ordination. He was still working hard at the
night-school, and Tom had been there once or twice to help him
when the curate was away. In short he was in very good books with
Grey, who had got the better of his shyness with him. He saw that
Tom was changed and sobered, and in his heart hoped some day to
wean him from the pursuits of the body, to which he was still
fearfully addicted, and to bring him into the fold. This hope was
not altogether unfounded; for, notwithstanding the strong bias
against them which Tom had brought with him from school, he was
now at times much attracted by many of the High Church doctrines,
and the men who professed them. Such men as Grey, he saw, did
really believe something, and were in earnest about carrying
their beliefs into action. The party might and did comprise many
others of the weakest sort, who believed and were in earnest
about nothing, but who liked to be peculiar. Nevertheless, while
he saw it laying hold of many of the best men of his time, it is
not to be wondered at that he was drawn towards it. Some help
might lie in these men if he could only get at it!

So he propounded his doubts and studies, and their results to
Grey. But it was a failure. Grey felt no difficulty or very
little, in the whole matter; but Tom found that it was because he
believed the world to belong to the devil. "_Laissez faire_,"
"buying cheap and selling dear," Grey held might be good enough
for laws for the world--very probably were. The laws of the
Church were "self-sacrifice," and "bearing one another's burdens"
her children should come out from the regions where the world's
laws were acknowledged.

Tom listened, was dazzled at first, and thought he was getting on
the right track. But very soon he found that Grey's specific was
not of the least use to him. It was no good to tell him of the
rules of a society to which he felt that he neither belonged, nor
wished to belong, for clearly it could not be the Church of
England. He was an outsider! Grey would probably admit it to be
so, if he asked him! He had no longing to be anything else, _if_
the Church meant an exclusive body, which took no care of any but
its own people, and had nothing to say to the great world in
which he and most people had to live, and buying and selling, and
hiring and working, had to go on. The close corporation might
hav