Mr. Wingfold was almost as different from the clergyman of Richard's idea, as was Richard's imagined God from any believable idea of God. The two men had never yet met, for what should bring a working-man and the clergyman of the next parish together? But one morning--he often went for a walk in the early morning--Richard saw before him, in the middle of a field-path, seated on a stile and stopping his way, the back of a man in a gray suit, evidently enjoying, like himself, the hour before sunrise. He knew somehow that he was not a working-man, but he did not suspect him one of the obnoxious class which lives by fooling itself and others. Wingfold heard Richard's step, looked round, knew him at once an artisan of some sort, and saw in him signs of purpose and character strong for his years. “Jolly morning!” he said. “It is indeed, sir!” answered Richard. “I like a walk in the morning better than at any other time of the day!” said Wingfold. “Well, sir, I do so too, though I can't tell why. I've often tried, but I haven't yet found out what makes the morning so different.” “Come!” thought the clergyman; “here's something I haven't met with too much of!” Richard remarked to himself that, whoever the gentleman was, he was certainly not stuck-up. They might have parted late the night before, instead of meeting now for the first time! “Are you a married man?” asked Wingfold. “No, sir,” answered Richard, surprised that a stranger should put the question. “If you had been,” Wingfold went on, “I should have been surer of your seeing what I mean when I say, that to be out before sunrise is like looking at your best friend asleep--that is, before her sun, her thought, namely, is up. Watching her face then, you see it come to life, grow radiant with sunrise.” “But,” rejoined Richard, “I have seen a person asleep whose face made it quite evident that thought was awake! It was shining through!” “Shining through, certainly,” said Wingfold, “not up. I doubt indeed if during any sleep, thought is quite in abeyance.” “Not when we are dead asleep, sir?--so dead that when we wake we don't remember anything?” “If thought in such a case must be _proved,_ it will have to go for non-existent. Yet, when you reflect that sometimes you discover that you must, a few minutes before, wide awake, have done something which you have no recollection of having done, and which, but for the fact remaining evident to your sight, you would not believe you had done, you must feel doubtful as to the loss of consciousness in sleep.” “Yes; that must give us pause!” “Hamlet!” said the clergyman to himself. “That's good! You may have read from top to bottom of a page, perhaps,” he went on, “without being able to recall a word: would you say no thought had passed through your mind in the process?--that the words had suggested nothing as you read them?”