We will go back, if it pleases the reader; for fortunately, it happens, that, in a work of this character, one can go back. Oh, how often in human life is it to be wished, that we could do the same! What deeds, done amiss, would then be rectified! What mistakes in thought, in conduct, in language, would then be corrected! What evils for the future avoided! What false steps would be turned back! What moral bonds shackling our whole being, would not then be broken! I do believe, that, if any man would take any hour out of any period of his life, and look at it with a calm, impartial, unprejudiced eye, he would feel a longing to turn back and change something therein: he would wish to say more, than he had said--or less--to say it in a different tone--with a different look--or he would have acted differently--he would have yielded--or resisted--or listened--or refused to listen--he would wish to have exerted himself energetically--or to have remained passive--or to have meditated ere he acted--or considered something he had forgotten--or attended to the small, still voice in his heart, when he had shut his ears. Something, something, he ever would have altered in the past! But, alas! the past is the only reality of life, unchangeable, irretrievable, indestructible; we can neither mould it, nor recall it, nor wipe it out. There it stands for ever: the rock of adamant, up whose steep side we can hew no backward path. We will turn back to where we left Doctor Miles and Beauchamp. Issuing forth from the church, and, passing round Stephen Gimlet's cottage, they found the worthy clergyman's little phaeton standing by the two horses which Beauchamp had brought from Tarningham Park. Orders were given for the four-wheeled and four-footed things to follow slowly; and the two gentlemen walked forward on foot, the younger putting his hand lightly through the arm of the elder, as a man does, when he wishes to bespeak attention to what he is going to say. "I have been looking at those monuments with some interest, my dear doctor," said Beauchamp, after they had taken about twenty steps in advance; "and now I am going to make you, in some degree, what, I dare say, as a good Protestant divine, you never expected to become--my father-confessor. There are several things, upon which I much wish to consult you, as I have great need of a good and fair opinion and advice." "The best that it is in my power to give, you shall have, my young friend," answered Doctor Miles; "not that I expect you to take my advice, either; for I never yet, in the course of a long life, knew above two men, who did take advice, when it was given. But that is not always the fault of the giver; and, therefore, mine is ever ready, when it is asked. What is it you have to say?" "More, I fear, than can be well said in one conversation," answered Beauchamp; "but I had better begin and tell a part, premising, that it is under the seal of confession, and therefore----"