w, to such
a height above all other children, he was likely enough to bring a spell
upon their boats, if anything crooked to God's will were done; and even
to draw them to their last stocking, if anything offended the providence
of law.

In any other place it would have been a point of combat what to say and
what to do in such a case as this. But Flamborough was of all the wide
world happiest in possessing an authority to reconcile all doubts. The
law and the Lord--two powers supposed to be at variance always, and to
share the week between them in proportions fixed by lawyers--the
holy and unholy elements of man's brief existence, were combined in
Flamborough parish in the person of its magisterial rector. He was also
believed to excel in the arts of divination and medicine too, for he was
a full Doctor of Divinity. Before this gentleman must be laid, both for
purse and conscience' sake, the case of the child just come out of the
fogs.

And true it was that all these powers were centred in one famous man,
known among the laity as "Parson Upandown." For the Reverend Turner
Upround, to give him his proper name, was a doctor of divinity, a
justice of the peace, and the present rector of Flamborough. Of all his
offices and powers, there was not one that he overstrained; and all that
knew him, unless they were thorough-going rogues and vagabonds, loved
him. Not that he was such a soft-spoken man as many were, who thought
more evil; but because of his deeds and nature, which were of the
kindest. He did his utmost, on demand of duty, to sacrifice this nature
to his stern position as pastor and master of an up-hill parish, with
many wrong things to be kept under. But while he succeeded in the form
now and then, he failed continually in the substance.

This gentleman was not by any means a fool, unless a kind heart proves
folly. At Cambridge he had done very well, in the early days of the
tripos, and was chosen fellow and tutor of Gonville and Caius College.
But tiring of that dull round in his prime, he married, and took to a
living; and the living was one of the many upon which a perpetual faster
can barely live, unless he can go naked also, and keep naked children.
Now the parsons had not yet discovered the glorious merits of hard
fasting, but freely enjoyed, and with gratitude to God, the powers with
which He had blessed them. Happily Dr. Upround had a solid income of
his own, and (like a sound mathematician) he took a wi