on and the most intense dread. Perhaps
he hated the Dissenters most, because they came nearer in contact
with him than the French; besides, the French had the excuse of
being Papists, while the Dissenters might have belonged to the
Church of England if they had not been utterly depraved. Yet in
practice Dr Wilson did not object to dine with Mr. Fishburn, who was
a personal friend and follower of Wesley, but then, as the doctor
would say, 'Wesley was an Oxford man, and that makes him a
gentleman; and he was an ordained minister of the Church of England,
so that grace can never depart from him.' But I do not know what
excuse he would have alleged for sending broth and vegetables to old
Ralph Thompson, a rabid Independent, who had been given to abusing
the Church and the vicar, from a Dissenting pulpit, as long as ever
he could mount the stairs. However, that inconsistency between Dr
Wilson's theories and practice was not generally known in
Monkshaven, so we have nothing to do with it.

Dr Wilson had had a very difficult part to play, and a still more
difficult sermon to write, during this last week. The Darley who had
been killed was the son of the vicar's gardener, and Dr Wilson's
sympathies as a man had been all on the bereaved father's side. But
then he had received, as the oldest magistrate in the neighbourhood,
a letter from the captain of the _Aurora_, explanatory and
exculpatory. Darley had been resisting the orders of an officer in
his Majesty's service. What would become of due subordination and
loyalty, and the interests of the service, and the chances of
beating those confounded French, if such conduct as Darley's was to
be encouraged? (Poor Darley! he was past all evil effects of human
encouragement now!)

So the vicar mumbled hastily over a sermon on the text, 'In the
midst of life we are in death'; which might have done as well for a
baby cut off in a convulsion-fit as for the strong man shot down
with all his eager blood hot within him, by men as hot-blooded as
himself. But once when the old doctor's eye caught the up-turned,
straining gaze of the father Darley, seeking with all his soul to
find a grain of holy comfort in the chaff of words, his conscience
smote him. Had he nothing to say that should calm anger and revenge
with spiritual power? no breath of the comforter to soothe repining
into resignation? But again the discord between the laws of man and
the laws of Christ stood before him; and he gave