“Use of my talents?” repeated the dying man. And then, thrusting his hands out from under the bedclothes, he said: “I came into this diocese with nothing—yes, with nothing—and now,” and he began to check off the names on the fingers of the left hand with the forefinger of the right hand, “I am rector of Eigncombe, worth £80; rector of Marwood, worth £450; rector of Westcote, worth £560; vicar of Barton, worth £300; and rector of Eastcote, worth a £1000. If that is not making use of one’s talents, I do not know what is. I think I can die in peace.” Morwenstow, as has been already said, had been without a resident vicar for a century before Mr. Hawker came there. When he arrived, it was with his great heart overflowing with love, and burning to do good to the souls and bodies of his people. He was about the parish all day on his pony, visiting every one of his flock, taking vehement interest in all their concerns, and doing everything he could think of to win their hearts. But two centuries of neglect by the Church was not to be remedied in a generation. Mr. Hawker was surprised that he could not do it in a twelvemonth. He was met with coldness and hostility by most of the farmers, who were, with one or two exceptions, Wesleyans or Bible Christians. The autocrat of the neighbourhood was an agent for the principal landowner of the district, and he held the people under his thumb. With him the vicar speedily quarrelled: their characters were as opposed as the poles, and it was impossible that they could work together. Mr. Hawker thought—rightly or wrongly, who shall decide?—that this man thwarted him at every turn, and urged on the farmers to oppose and upset all his schemes for benefiting the parish, spiritually and temporally. Mutual antipathy caused recriminations, and the hostility became open. The agent thought he had dealt the vicar a severe blow when he persuaded Sir J. Buller to claim St. John’s Well. Mr. Hawker found himself baffled by the coldness of the Dissenters, and the hostility of the agent, which he had probably brought upon himself; and it struck a chill to his heart, and saddened it. The vicar was, however, not blameless in the matter. He expected all opposition to melt away before his will; and if a parishioner, or any one else with whom he had dealings, did not prove malleable, and submit to be turned in his hands like a piece of wax, he had no patience with him. He could not argue, but he could make assertions with the force and vehemence which tell with some people as arguments. The warmth with which Mr. Hawker took up the cause of the labourers, his denunciation of the truck system, and the forcible way in which he protested against the lowness of the wage paid the men, conduced, no doubt, to set the farmers against him. But he was the idol of the workmen. Their admiration and respect for him knew no bounds. “If all gentlemen were like our vicar,” was the common saying, “the world would have no wrongs in it.”