But within a few hours of that avowal an amazing thing happened. It happened during the night; for when he went to bed the sixpence was in his trouser pocket, and when he got up in the morning it was gone; nor did he dare to tax Davidina with the theft. In chapel, the next Sunday, when the plate came round for foreign missions, Davidina with ostentation put sixpence into it. Is it to be wondered that, before the week was over, he had got sixpence back from somewhere, and took care that Davidina should see him spending it. Davidina meant well, I am sure; but it is to be questioned whether her method of clipping his wings was the right one. He became tangential to the orbit of her spells; they touched, but they did not contain him. Meanwhile, without Davidina’s aid, even without her approval, Mr. Trimblerigg’s call to the ministry was becoming more assured. And the question mainly was whether, in that family of cramped means, money could be found in the years lying immediately ahead to provide the necessary training. It meant two years spent mainly away from home at the Free Evangelical Training College; two years of escape from Davidina for whole months at a time; it meant leaving home a boy and coming back very nearly a man. Even had the ministry not appealed to him, it would have been worth it for the peculiar attraction of those circumstances. Whether this could become practically possible depended mainly upon old Uncle Trimblerigg--Uncle Trimblerigg whose investments in house property had been inspired by holy scripture, but whose theological tenets were of a kind for which up-to-date Free Evangelicalism no longer provided the college or the training. Nor did he believe that either college or training were necessary for the preaching of the Word. He had done it himself for fifty years, merely by opening the book where it wished to be opened and pondering what was thus presented. The verbal inspiration of Scripture, not merely in its writing but in its presentation to the sense of the true believer, was the very foundation of his faith. The sect of ‘the True Believers’ had of late years sadly diminished; for as all True Believers believed that while they believed truly they could never make a mistake in their interpretations of Scripture, it became as time went on dangerous for them to meet often or to exchange pulpits, since, where one was found differing from another, mutual excommunication of necessity followed and they walked no more in each other’s ways. Only at their great annual congress did they meet to reaffirm the foundation of their faith and thunder with a united voice the Word which did not change.