In Hornham, the vast majority of a poor and teeming population was quite without interest in any religious matter. The chapels of the various sects were attended by the residuum, the congregations at St. Elwyn's were large--to the full holding capacity of the mother church and the smaller mission building--and a fair proportion of people worshipped at St. Luke's, the only other church in the neighbourhood. Mr. Carr, the vicar of St. Luke's, was a man of about thirty-five. He had taken a good degree at Cambridge, spent a few years in various curacies, and had been appointed vicar of St. Luke's, Hornham, which was in the gift of an Evangelical body known as Simon's Trustees, about four years before Mr. Hamlyn had thrown Hornham into its present state of religious war. The vicar of St. Luke's was a man of considerable mental power. He was unmarried, had no private means, and lived a lonely, though active, life in his small and ill-built vicarage. In appearance, he was tall, somewhat thin, and he wore a pointed, close-cropped beard and moustache. His face was somewhat melancholy, but when he was moved or interested, the smile that came upon it was singularly sweet. In the ordinary business of life, he was reserved and shy. He had none of the genial Irish _bonhomie_ of Blantyre, the wholesome breezy boyishness of Stephens, or the grim force of King. He had a "personality"--to the eye--but he failed to sustain the impression his appearance made in talk. He was of no use in a drawing-room and very nearly a failure in any social gathering. Those few members of his flock with whom, now and again, he had to enter into purely social relations, said of him: "Mr. Carr is a thorough gentleman, but the poor fellow is dreadfully shy. He wants a wife; perhaps she'd liven him up a bit." Such was the man in private life. In his clerical duties, as a priest--or, as he would have put it, a pastor--his personal character was sunk and merged in his office as completely as that of Father Blantyre himself. His sermons were full of earnest exhortation, his private ministrations were fervent and helpful, and there was a power in his ministry that was felt by all with whom he came in contact. He was distinctly and entirely what is known as an "Evangelical," using that fine word in the best and noblest sense. He belonged to a school of thought which is rapidly becoming merged in and overlapped by others, sometimes to its betterment, but more frequently to its destruction, but which standing by itself is a powerful force. He did not realise the state of transition in which he and other men of his school must necessarily stand to-day. Their position, admirable as it often is, is but a compromise. He did not as yet realise this.