On the day when these truly original ideas had occurred to Mr. Neuchamp he was riding contentedly along the fenced highway with the intention of reaching at nightfall the homestead of a landed proprietor of some mark in his own district, whose acquaintance he had made at the New Holland Club. He was certain of hospitality and of receiving the clearest directions as to his route. Within a few miles of his destination, as he calculated, he encountered a gentleman, on a well-bred hack, who had just emerged from a lane at right angles with the road. He replied to the stranger’s courteous and unaffected greeting with an inquiry as to the precise distance of Mr. Haughton’s house―if perchance he happened to be aware of it. ‘I am going within a mile of the entrance gate,’ said the stranger; ‘I shall be happy to be your guide so far. I shall probably be at Elmshurst to lunch to-morrow, and should be there to-night―but that I have to visit a sick parishioner.’ Mr. Neuchamp had partly conjectured from the dress of the gentleman that he was in holy orders, and of course the point was settled by his admission. ‘You are then the clergyman of this district?’ said he. ‘You are fortunate, I should say, in the locality of your labours.’ ‘Yes,’ said the stranger, rather absently, ‘there is no fault to be found with the climate or the scenery, and I have not met in my travels with a more pleasant and kindly society. There is but one defect, and that is universal.’ ‘And that is, may I ask?’ ‘Earnestness, thoroughness,’ said the stranger, fixing his clear sad eye upon Mr. Neuchamp. ‘If those whose duty it is to provide aid and comfort for the souls that are like Lazarus, lying at their gates, leprous and diseased in mind,―if they would but give of their substance, or better still, a hundred times better, of their time and energy,―much, how much, could be done for God and for man.’ ‘I passed a very neat church and schoolhouse just now,’ affirmed Ernest; ‘surely matters spiritual are regarded here with interest, and if the enthusiasm you lament be wanting, when and in what land is it to be found?’ ‘I speak not,’ said the unknown, a glow of fervour lighting up a pale handsome countenance, and illumining his melancholy dark eyes―‘I speak not of the mere routine donations which reach respectable uniformity and stop there. I speak of the want of the spirit that maketh alive, and in one class not more than in others. The vicarious aid, it is true, is not sparingly or grudgingly given. But the heart’s tribute―the life-donation―where is it?’