of loose white hair above it; his large lips were always
moving, whether he spoke or not. He resembled, as I now perceive,
the portraits of S. T. Coleridge in age, but with all the
intellect left out of them. He lived in a sort of trance of
solemn religious despondency. He had thrown up his cure of souls,
because he became convinced that he had committed the Sin against
the Holy Ghost. His wife was younger than he, very small, very
tight, very active, with black eyes like pin-pricks at the base
of an extremely high and narrow forehead, bordered with glossy
ringlets. He was very cross to her, and it was murmured that
'dear Mrs. Paget had often had to pass through the waters of
affliction'. They were very poor, but rigidly genteel, and she
was careful, so far as she could, to conceal from the world the
caprices of her poor lunatic husband.

In our circle, it was never for a moment admitted that Mr. Paget
was a lunatic. It was said that he had gravely sinned, and was
under the Lord's displeasure; prayers were abundantly offered up
that he might be led back into the pathway of light, and that the
Smiling Face might be drawn forth for him from behind the
Frowning Providence. When the man had an epileptic seizure in the
High Street, he was not taken to a hospital, but we repeated to
one another, with shaken heads, that Satan, that crooked Serpent,
had been unloosed for a season. Mr. Paget was fond of talking, in
private and in public, of his dreadful spiritual condition and he
would drop his voice while he spoke of having committed the
Unpardonable Sin, with a sort of shuddering exultation, such as
people sometimes feel in the possession of a very unusual
disease.

It might be thought that the position held in any community by
persons so afflicted and eccentric as the Pagets would be very
precarious. But it was not so with us; on the contrary, they took
a prominent place at once. Mr. Paget, in spite of his spiritual
bankruptcy, was only too anxious to help my Father in his
ministrations, and used to beg to be allowed to pray and exhort.
In the latter case he took the tone of a wounded veteran, who,
though fallen on the bloody field himself, could still encourage
younger warriors to march forward to victory. Everybody longed to
know what the exact nature had been of that sin against the Holy
Ghost which had deprived Mr. Paget of every glimmer of hope for
time or for eternity. It was whispered that even my Father
himself w