"Willingly," said Polwarth, handing it to him.

"And I may carry it home with me?"

"Certainly."

"I shall take right good care of it. Are there any further memorials
of struggle with unbelief?"

"Yes, there are some; for mood and not conviction must, in such a
mind, often rule the hour. Sometimes he can believe; sometimes he
cannot: he is a great man indeed who can always rise above his own
moods! There is one passage I specially remember in which after his
own fashion he treats of the existence of a God. You will know the
one I mean when you come to it."

"It is indeed a treasure!" said the curate, taking the book and
regarding it with prizing eyes. In his heart he was thinking of
Leopold and Helen. And while he thus regarded the book, he was
himself regarded of the gray luminous eyes of Rachel. What shone
from those eyes may have been her delight at hearing him so speak of
the book, for the hand that wrote it was that of her father; but
there was a lingering in her gaze, not unmixed with questioning, and
a certain indescribable liquidity in its light, reminding one of the
stars as seen through a clear air from which the dew settles thick,
that might have made a mother anxious. Alas for many a woman whose
outward form is ungainly--she has a full round heart under the
twisted ribs!