Mr. Trimblerigg did not in after days actually set fire to anything in order that he might come running to the rescue when rescue was too late; but he did inflame many a situation seven times more than it was wont to be inflamed, setting people by the ears, and causing many an uprooting in places where no replanting could avail. And when he had got matters thus thoroughly involved, he would apply thereto his marvellous powers of accommodation and persuasion, and, if some sort of peace and order did thereafter emerge, regard himself quite genuinely as the deliverer. At a later date his zeal for the Lord’s House broke up the Free United Evangelicals into separate groups of an unimportant size, which when they seemed about to disappear wholly from view, he reunited again; and having for the moment redoubled what was left, regarded his work as good, though in the religious world the Free Evangelicals had forfeited thenceforth their old priority of place, a circumstance from which (when convinced of its permanence) he made his personal escape by embracing second Adventism. And though doubtless he carried his Free Evangelism with him into the field of modern prophecy, the Free Evangelicals within their own four walls knew him no more. Very effectively he had burnt them out, and in their case no insurance policy provided for the rebuilding: in that seat of the mighty, probed by the beams of a new day, only the elderly grey ashes remained of men whose word once gave light. CHAPTER THREE _Trial and Error_ At a very early stage in his career, before his theological training had overtly begun, the moral consciousness of Mr. Trimblerigg was far more accurately summed up in the words, ‘Thou, Davidina, seest me,’ than in the more generally accepted text which shone with symbolic rays from an illuminated scroll hung over his bed. That text with its angel faces and gold edgings did not pierce the joints of his harness, to the discovery of vulnerable spots, with the same sharp efficiency as did the dark watchful eye of Davidina. As he entered into his ’teens with the instinct for spiritual adventure growing strong, he had an uncomfortable sense of transparency where Davidina was concerned--or rather where she was not concerned but chose to intrude--which made him cease to feel a self-contained person. If there was anyone in the world who knew him--not as he wished to be known, but as in his more disconcerted moments he sometimes suspected himself to be--it was Davidina. Under the fixture of her eye he lost confidence; its calm quizzical gaze tripped his thoughts, and checked the flow of his words: initiative and invention went out of him. The result was truly grievous, for though he could do without self-respect for quite long intervals, self-complacency was the necessary basis for every action. Davidina deprived him of that.