If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest! Had ever heart more need of thine, If thine indeed hath rest? Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane That in their bodies death did breed: If thou canst cure my deeper pain, Then thou art Lord indeed. Leopold smiled sleepily as Wingfold read, and ere the reading was over, slept. “What can the little object want here?” said Mrs. Ramshorn. Wingfold looked up, and seeing who it was approaching them, said, “Oh! that is Mr. Polwarth, who keeps the park gate.” “Nobody can well mistake him,” returned Mrs. Ramshorn. “Everybody knows the creature.” “Few people know him really,” said Wingfold. “I HAVE heard that he is an oddity in mind as well as in body,” said Mrs. Ramshorn. “He is a friend of mine,” rejoined the curate. “I will go and meet him. He wants to know how Leopold is.” “Pray keep your seat, Mr. Wingfold. I don’t in the least mind him,” said Mrs. Ramshorn. “Any FRIEND of yours, as you are kind enough to call him, will be welcome. Clergymen come to know--indeed it is their duty to be acquainted with all sorts of people. The late dean of Halystone would stop and speak to a pauper.” The curate did however go and meet Polwarth, and returning with him presented him to Mrs. Ramshorn, who received him with perfect condescension, and a most gracious bow. Helen bent her head also, very differently, but it would be hard to say how. The little man turned from them, and for a moment stood looking on the face of the sleeping youth: he had not seen him since Helen ordered him to leave the house. Even now she looked angry at his presumption in staring at her brother. But Polwarth did not see her look. A great tenderness came over his face, and his lips moved softly. “The Lord of thy life keep it for thee, my son!” he murmured, gazed a moment longer, then rejoined Wingfold. They walked aside a few paces. “Pray be seated,” said Mrs. Ramshorn, without looking up from her knitting--the seat she offered being the wide meadow. But they had already done so, and presently were deep in a gentle talk, of which at length certain words that had been foolhardy enough to wander within her range, attracted the notice of Mrs. Ramshorn, and she began to listen. But she could not hear distinctly. “There should be one bishop at least,” the little man was saying, “or I don’t know but he ought to be the arch-arch-bishop,--a poor man, if possible,--one like the country parson Chaucer sets up in contrast with the regular clergy,--whose main business should be to travel about from university to university, from college to college, from school to school, warning off all young men who did not know within themselves that it was neither for position, nor income, nor study, nor influence, that they sought to minister in the temple, from entering the church. As from holy ground, he would warn them off.”