k! So entirely has he dedicated himself that he really
feels the guidance of a ploughman's soul a higher task than the
grandest achievement in science or literature. By the bye, I hope
he will take up his pen again. It is really wanted. Will you give
him a message from me?

C. How strange! I never knew that he was an author.

PROF. D. Ah! you are a young thing, and these are abstruse
subjects.

C. Oh! the Fathers and Ritual, I suppose?

PROF. D. No doubt he is a great authority there, as a man of his
ability must be; but I was thinking of a course of scientific papers
he put forth ten years ago, taking up the arguments against
materialism as no one could do who is not as thoroughly at home as
he is in the latest discoveries and hypotheses. He ought to answer
that paper in the CRITICAL WORLD.

C. I was so much interested in that paper.

PROF. D. It has just the speciousness that runs away with young
people. I should like to talk it over with him. Do you think I
should be in the way if I ran down?

C. I should think a visit from you would be an immense pleasure to
him; and I am sure it would be good for the place to be stirred up.

PROF. D. You have not learnt to prize that atmosphere in which
things always seem to assume their true proportion, and to prompt
the cry of St. Bernard's brother--'All earth for me, all heaven for
you.'

C. That was surely an outcome of the time when people used to
sacrifice certainties to uncertainties, and spoil life for the sake
of they knew not what.

PROF. D. For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.

STRANGER. Mr. Dunlop! This is an unexpected pleasure!

C. (ALONE). Well, wonders will never cease. The great Professor
Dunlop talking to me quite preachy and goody; and of all people in
the world, the old man at Darkglade turning out to be a great
physiologist!

VII. TWO OLD FRIENDS

SCENE.--DARKGLADE VICARAGE STUDY. MR. AVELAND AND PROFESSOR DUNLOP.

PROF. D. Thank you, sir. It has been a great pleasure to talk over
these matters with you; I hope a great benefit.

MR. A. I am sure it is a great benefit to us to have a breath from
the outer world. I hope you will never let so long a time go by
without our meeting. Remember, as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a
man's countenance that of his friend.

PROF. D. I shall be only too thankful. I rejoice in the having met
your grand-daughter, who encouraged me to offer myself. Is she
permanently