And here the farmer, red in the face, paused for a reply. In the meanwhile the Rector called for the Sunday paper, which had reached there that evening. The surgeon set off to attend a patient in labour—his principal employment in that healthy district, where the people kept good hours and breathed good air—and the bar-parlour of the Spread Eagle resumed its Sabbatic quiet. Only one should-be sleeper lay awake that night, and that was the village pastor’s son. He was to go on probation to Sloville. There was no minister there, and the people wanted one. Was he to succeed? Did he sufficiently realize the import of his message? Had he so mastered the truth that he could commend it in all its fulness and beauty to others? These were questions which gave him—as they do all in such a position—great searchings of heart. At college Wentworth had difficulties which were only to be put away, said his teachers, by Christian work. They, good people, had had doubts themselves, but they had lived them down, and so they went to their daily task quite satisfied, and they reaped the benefit of acquiescence as they became more and more celebrated for wisdom and piety, and as more and more they lost the meaning of Scriptural language in conventional and orthodox formula. Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles was not imposed on the young divine; but he was expected, nevertheless, to adopt a certain creed, and repeat it. Students at his college were not expected to study truth, but only as it appeared in a human, rather than a Divine, form. Any attempt at independent inquiry was rejected as heresy of the most odious kind. Happy were they who never had their minds darkened by doubt, who, according to their own ideas, were taught of the Spirit; who found every difficulty solved by prayer: to whom Deity revealed Himself, as He did to the Jews of old, as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night; who felt that their God was a jealous God, consuming with eternal fire the reprobate; who believed that God was angry with them if they took a walk in the fields on a Sunday, or kept studying secular affairs one moment after twelve (Greenwich time) on a Saturday night. To this class Wentworth did not belong. He was wont to regard the Creator of the world as a Father in heaven—as a God of love—who had filled all this wide earth with beauty for man to grasp and enjoy. Pious people said he lacked unction. But he was anxious for action, as all young men are, for real life and real work, and desirous ‘to settle,’ as the phrase is. His father was poor, and could not afford to keep him at home. He had finished his college career—with acceptance. No one had a word to say against him, and none doubted his ability. At Sloville the people were supposed to be profoundly orthodox. It was hard indeed to send such a young man there, yet it was agreed that Wentworth should go there on probation. CHAPTER VI. AT SLOVILLE AGAIN.