its hole, he said; and he was never tempted to try it again.

Regularly too every day, about one o'clock, the gnome-like form of
the gate-keeper would issue from the little door in the park-fence,
and come marching across the grass towards Leopold's chair, which
was set near the small clump of trees already mentioned. The curate
was almost always there, not talking much to the invalid, but
letting him know every now and then by some little attention or
word, or merely by showing himself, that he was near. Sometimes he
would take refuge from the heat, which the Indian never felt too
great, amongst the trees, and there would generally be thinking out
what he wanted to say to his people the next Sunday.

One thing he found strange, and could not satisfy himself
concerning, namely, that although his mind was so much occupied with
Helen that he often seemed unable to think consecutively upon any
subject, he could always foresee his sermon best when, seated behind
one of the trees, he could by moving his head see her at work beside
Leopold's chair. But the thing that did carry him through became
plain enough to him afterwards: his faith in God was all the time
growing--and that through what seemed at the time only a succession
of interruptions. Nothing is so ruinous to progress in which effort
is needful, as satisfaction with apparent achievement; that ever
sounds a halt; but Wingfold's experience was that no sooner did he
set his foot on the lowest hillock of self-congratulation than some
fresh difficulty came that threw him prostrate; and he rose again
only in the strength of the necessity for deepening and broadening
his foundations that he might build yet higher, trust yet farther:
that was the only way not to lose everything. He was gradually
learning that his faith must be an absolute one, claiming from God