He kept his burning thoughts to himself, and received ordination from highly moral men who had never thought enough to harbour a doubt. He went back to his native county an ordained clergyman, to begin what he believed to be his labour in his Master’s vineyard. But never had shepherd such a flock. When he tried to teach them spiritual things, they resented it as an attack on their morals. Old Tom Shapleigh, who was a vestryman, embodied the prevailing sentiment in his reply to Conyers when the clergyman tried to find out old Tom’s spiritual attitude. “Now, look here, Conyers, I’ve known you ever since you were born, and I was a regular communicant in Abingdon church before your father married your mother. I was married by a bishop--yes, zounds, sir, by a bishop!--and pretty dear it cost me in more ways than one. I don’t ill-treat my wife, or starve my negroes, or cheat my neighbour, and, further than that, you have nothing to do. Spiritual attitude be hanged! Go after the women if you want to talk that sort of thing.” Some of the women, notably Mrs. Blair, had a tender, religious sentiment that was grateful to poor Conyers, going blindly upon his way. But he could not accept the popular doctrine that only women had any spiritual side. To him the great fundamental facts of existence--the soul, the future life, all the mysterious hopes and fears of poor humanity concerning that future life--were problems that no thinking man could thrust aside. But when he tried to penetrate further than Mrs. Blair’s simple belief, her daily reading of the Bible to her children and servants, he found that he only startled and confused her. When he tried to get at the master of the house, Blair flatly refused to have anything to say regarding the state of his soul. The men like old Tom Shapleigh guyed Conyers; the men of finer fiber, like Jack Blair, avoided him. When Mr. Conyers, meeting Blair in the road, tried to talk religion to him, Blair put spurs to his horse and galloped off, laughing. When Conyers came to Newington on the same errand Blair announced to his wife that it was useless. “I’ll be shot if any parson living shall meddle with my religion! I don’t mind a little sermonising from you, my dear, and you know I made an agreement with you that if you’d let me smoke in the drawing-room I’d stand a chapter in the Bible every night; and the fact is, a man will take a little religious dragooning from his wife or his mother without grumbling. But when it comes to a man’s trying it--why, Conyers is an ass, that’s all.” Poor Conyers, repulsed on every side, knew not what to do. He found but one person in the whole community willing to _think_ on the subject of religion, although the women were usually quite ready enough to _feel_. This was Sylvia Shapleigh. But Sylvia wanted to be instructed. “Tell me,” she said, “what is true? The Bible puzzles me; I can’t understand it. Do you?” Conyers remained silent.