helpless unhelpable thing such men would have us believe it--the
hotbed mother of the children of an iron Necessity. Can any
damnation be worse than this damning into an existence from which
there is no refuge but a doubtful death?

Drew overtook Wingfold, and they walked together into Glaston.

"Wasn't that splendid?" said the draper.

"Hath not God chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
mighty?" returned the curate. "Even through the play of a mad-man's
imagination, the spirit of a sound mind may speak. Did you not find
in it some stuff that would shape into answers to your questions?

"I ought to have done so, I dare say," answered the draper, "but to
tell the truth, I was so taken up with the wild story, and the style
of the thing, and the little man's way of reading it, that I never
thought of what I was full of when I came."

They parted at the shop, and the curate went on.






CHAPTER XIV.

STRUGGLES.