“Thomas, my friend,” I said, when we got into the shop, laying my hand on his shoulder, “will you after this say that God has dealt hardly with you? There’s a son for any man God ever made to give thanks for on his knees! Thomas, you have a strong sense of fair play in your heart, and you GIVE fair play neither to your own son nor yet to God himself. You close your doors and brood over your own miseries, and the wrongs people have done you; whereas, if you would but open those doors, you might come out into the light of God’s truth, and see that His heart is as clear as sunlight towards you. You won’t believe this, and therefore naturally you can’t quite believe that there is a God at all; for, indeed, a being that was not all light would be no God at all. If you would but let Him teach you, you would find your perplexities melt away like the snow in spring, till you could hardly believe you had ever felt them. No arguing will convince you of a God; but let Him once come in, and all argument will be tenfold useless to convince you that there is no God. Give God justice. Try Him as I have said.—Good night.” He did not return my farewell with a single word. But the grasp of his strong rough hand was more earnest and loving even than usual. I could not see his face, for it was almost dark; but, indeed, I felt that it was better I could not see it. I went home as peaceful in my heart as the night whose curtains God had drawn about the earth that it might sleep till the morrow. CHAPTER XIV. MY PUPIL. Although I do happen to know how Miss Oldcastle fared that night after I left her, the painful record is not essential to my story. Besides, I have hitherto recorded only those things “quorum pars magna”—or minima, as the case may be—“fui.” There is one exception, old Weir’s story, for the introduction of which my reader cannot yet see the artistic reason. For whether a story be real in fact, or only real in meaning, there must always be an idea, or artistic model in the brain, after which it is fashioned: in the latter case one of invention, in the former case one of choice. In the middle of the following week I was returning from a visit I had paid to Tomkins and his wife, when I met, in the only street of the village, my good and honoured friend Dr Duncan. Of course I saw him often—and I beg my reader to remember that this is no diary, but only a gathering together of some of the more remarkable facts of my history, admitting of being ideally grouped—but this time I recall distinctly because the interview bore upon many things. “Well, Dr Duncan,” I said, “busy as usual fighting the devil.” “Ah, my dear Mr Walton,” returned the doctor—and a kind word from him went a long way into my heart—“I know what you mean. You fight the devil from the inside, and I fight him from the outside. My chance is a poor one.”