Lancelot read this, and re-read it; and smiled, but sadly--and the more he read, the stronger its arguments seemed to him, and he rejoiced thereat. For there is a bad pleasure--happy he who has not felt it--in a pitiless reductio ad absurdum, which asks tauntingly, 'Why do you not follow out your own conclusions?'--instead of thanking God that people do not follow them out, and that their hearts are sounder than their heads. Was it with this feeling that the fancy took possession of him, to show the letter to Tregarva? I hope not--perhaps he did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I wish to make them, face manfully a real awful question now racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able to answer the sophist fiend--for honestly, such he is--when their time comes, as come it will. At least he wanted to test at once Tregarva's knowledge and his logic. As for his 'faith,' alas! he had not so much reverence for it as to care what effect Luke's arguments might have there. 'The whole man,' quoth Lancelot to himself, 'is a novel phenomenon; and all phenomena, however magnificent, are surely fair subjects for experiment. Magendie may have gone too far, certainly, in dissecting a live dog--but what harm in my pulling the mane of a dead lion?' So he showed the letter to Tregarva as they were fishing together one day--for Lancelot had been installed duly in the Whitford trout preserves'--Tregarva read it slowly; asked, shrewdly enough, the meaning of a word or two as he went on; at last folded it up deliberately, and returned it to its owner with a deep sigh. Lancelot said nothing for a few minutes; but the giant seemed so little inclined to open the conversation, that he was forced at last to ask him what he thought of it. 'It isn't a matter for thinking, sir, to my mind--There's a nice fish on the feed there, just over-right that alder.' 'Hang the fish! Why not a matter for thinking?' 'To my mind, sir, a man may think a deal too much about many matters that come in his way.' 'What should he do with them, then?' 'Mind his own business.' 'Pleasant for those whom they concern!--That's rather a cold-blooded speech for you, Tregarva!' The Cornishman looked up at him earnestly. His eyes were glittering--was it with tears? 'Don't fancy I don't feel for the poor young gentleman--God help him!--I've been through it all--or not through it, that's to say. I had a brother once, as fine a young fellow as ever handled pick, as kind-hearted as a woman, and as honest as the sun in Heaven.--But he would drink, sir;--that one temptation, he never could stand it. And one day at the shaft's mouth, reaching after the kibble-chain-- maybe he was in liquor, maybe not--the Lord knows; but--'