ait long enough to be aware that the Curate
left the other two to such consultations as were inevitable between
them, and went away very hastily to his own house, and to the work which
still awaited him--"When the wicked man turneth away from the evil of
his ways, and doeth that which is lawful and right." Mr Wentworth, when
he came back to it, sat for about an hour over his text before he wrote
a single syllable. His heart had been wrung that day by the sharpest
pangs which can be inflicted upon a proud and generous spirit. He was
disposed to be bitter against all the world--against the dull eyes that
would not see, the dull ears that could shut themselves against all
suggestions either of gratitude or justice. It appeared to him, on the
whole, that the wicked man was every way the best off in this world,
besides being wooed and besought to accept the blessings of the other.
And the Curate was conscious of an irrepressible inclination to
exterminate the human vermin who made the earth such an imbroglio of
distress and misery; and was sore and wounded in his heart to feel how
his own toils and honest purposes availed him nothing, and how all the
interest and sympathy of bystanders went to the pretender. These
sentiments naturally complicated his thoughts, and made composition
difficult; not to say that they added a thrill of human feeling warmer
than usual to the short and succinct sermon. It was not an emotional
sermon, in the ordinary sense of the word; but it was so for Mr
Wentworth, who carried to an extreme point the Anglican dislike for
pulpit exaggeration in all forms. The Perpetual Curate was not a natural
orator. He had very little of the eloquence which gave Mr Vincent so
much success in the Dissenting connection during his short stay in
Carlingford, which was a kind of popularity not much to the taste of the
Churchman. But Mr Wentworth had a certain faculty of concentrating his
thoughts into the tersest expression, and of uttering in a very few
words, as if they did not mean anything particular, ideas which were
always individual, and often of distinct originality--a kind of
utterance which is very dear to the English mind. As was natural, there
were but a limited amount of people able to find him out; but those who
did so were rather fond of talking about the "restrained power" of the
Curate of St Roque's.

Next morning was a glorious summer Sunday--one of those days of peace
on which this tired old earth ta