time, and would cost money. It was not
without misgiving that he had consented to enter on the first of them.

There was still in his mind, as he believed, a reservation. He would
give up the property if he ever saw fit cause.

Now, if he began to tie himself by engaging in expensive enterprises, or
by undertaking responsibilities, it might be impossible to do this.

Therefore he held off for some little time.

He fell into his first enterprise almost unawares, he got out of his
reluctant shrinking from it afterwards by a curious sophistry. "While
this estate is virtually mine," he thought, "it is undoubtedly my duty
to be a good steward of it. If, in the course of providence, I am shown
that I am to give it up, no doubt I shall also be shown how to proceed
about these minor matters."

He had learnt from his uncle the doctrine of a particular providence,
but had not received with it his uncle's habit of earnest waiting on
providence, and straightforward desire to follow wherever he believed it
to lead.

Valentine came almost at once under the influence of the vicar, Mr.
Craik, the man who had always seen something so more than commonly
mysterious about the ways of God to men. Mr. Craik wanted Valentine to
restore the old church, by which he meant to pull it almost to pieces,
to raise the roof, to clear away the quaint old oaken galleries, to push
out a long chancel, and to put in some painted windows, literally such,
pictures of glass, things done at Munich.

When Valentine, always facile, had begun to consider this matter, a
drawing of the building, as it was to look when restored, was made, in
order to stir up his zeal, and make him long for a parish church that
would do him and the vicar credit. He beheld it, and forthwith vowed,
with uncivil directness, that he would rather build the vicar a _crack
church_ to his mind, in the middle of the village, than help in having
that dear old place mauled and tampered with.

Mr. Craik no sooner heard this than he began to talk about a site.

He was a good man, had learned to be meek, so that when he was after
anything desirable he might be able to take a rebuff, and not mind it.

In the pleasant summer evenings he often came to see Valentine, and
while the latter sauntered about with a cigar, he would carve faces on a
stick with his knife, walking beside him. He had given up smoking,
because he wanted the poor also to give it up, as an expensive luxury,
and one that