Late in the afternoon the men from Hawthorn returned home. Squire Carthew rode with pursed lips, ponderously on to Carthew House. But the minister refused an invitation to accompany him. He wished to consider these matters in his closet, alone with the Scriptures and in prayer. He put up his horse and went into his small, chill house. There lived with him an aunt and one maidservant, and, it being late, they had his supper spread and waiting. But he would not touch the food; he had ordained for himself a fast. With a candle in his hand he went into his small bare room and closed the door. Cloak and hat laid aside, he appeared slight and spare and sad-coloured, a man as intensely in earnest as might well be; a man, as far as his conscious knowledge of himself could light the vaults and caverns, sincere and of an undivided will to the service and glory of his God. On the table lay his Bible, open; from wall to wall stretched a space of bare floor good for slow-pacing to and fro, good for kneeling, for wrestling in prayer. The room was haunted to him; it had seen so many of what he and all his day, and days before and days after, called “spiritual struggles.” But there was pleasure no less than gloom and exaltation in the haunting; there were emanations from the walls of triumph, for though his soul agonized he was bold to believe that also it conquered. He believed that he was foe of Satan and henchman of the Lord. Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic thoughts that Satan had him; cold and awful doubts of his acceptability to his overlord. But they were not lasting; they went away like the chill mists from the face of the hills. It was incredible, it was impossible that the Lord would not see his own banner, would not recognize and succour his own liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under displeasure; good! the punishment came in agony and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shown sight of the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred and of that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! Nay, more solemnly and threateningly, in an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegeman would forfeit—the heavens opening and showing the rainbow-circled throne, the seven lamps, the sea of glass, the winged beasts saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; the four-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling down and worshipping Him who sat on the Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates, and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple the ark of the testament. “O God,” prayed the minister, “take not my name from the book of life! Take not my name from the book of life, and I will serve thee forever and ever!”