It was true that the Chapel of Mount Horeb, with house attached, was still his own; but within a week the stipend pertaining thereto had been withdrawn, and the Trustees, believing themselves to be deprived of the chapel, had already begun the hire of temporary premises. But Mr. Trimblerigg’s instinct did not play him false; and when acknowledging his dismissal at the hands of the Trustees he informed them that the chapel was still open to them, free of charge and without condition. He was sure, he said, that this was what his uncle would have wished. And having done all this, he felt that he had committed a great act of faith; he felt also that he had done at last something which could not fail to win the admiration of Davidina. Davidina was not herself a True Believer; but she had done him the compliment to come from a distance to hear his discourse; and much he wanted to know what she thought of it. There was the added circumstance that she had a direct interest--not theological but financial--in the severance which had now taken place, and it was with elated curiosity that he looked her in the eyes--with a look more straight and unembarrassed than he could usually muster--to see how she had taken it. He found her waiting for him outside. ‘Well, what d’you think of that?’ he inquired. ‘I think you’d have made a wonderful jockey,’ she replied. ‘You’d have made your fortune.’ ‘Jockey?’ he said, puzzled. ‘I didn’t exactly pull it off this time, at any rate.’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Did you mean to?’ ‘Yes; I did my best.’ ‘That I’m sure.’ ‘How d’you define a jockey?’ he asked uneasily, irritated by her fixed abstention from further comment. ‘There’s your own definition,’ she said, ‘you wrote it in a school essay. I kept it because I thought it was good. I won’t spoil it; I’ll send it you.’ And the next day the essay, which he had entirely forgotten, written in a round boyish hand, reached him by post. ‘A jockey,’ he read, ‘is one who had trained himself from early years in the dangerous and delicate art of falling from a horse.’ Accompanying it was a cheque for a hundred pounds. ‘No wonder!’ said Mr. Trimblerigg, ‘she feels that she owes me something now.’ For by what he had just done he was giving her the right, twelve years hence, to continue as main beneficiary under the will of Uncle Phineas. Nevertheless he was pleased that he had pleased her. It was almost the first time he had known it happen. Davidina’s opinion of him counted much more than he liked. All his growing years he had tried to escape from her, and still he had failed. CHAPTER ELEVEN _Scene-shifting_ Mr. Trimblerigg’s fall from the grace of true Belief--or from the good graces of the True Believers--had a famous reverberation in the Free Church Press; and at the age of twenty-four he became for the time being--next to the great Dr. Giffard himself--the most controversially talked-of person among the high lights of Nonconformity.