bully, in spite of a certain lingering kindness of heart that
showed itself at such rare times when he was neither
roaring drunk nor crucified by black reaction. His
brother's child, fortunately, had inherited little of the
paternal family traits, but in both body and brain favoured
his mother, the daughter of a learned divine who had spent
unusual pains on her book education, but had left her
penniless and incapable of changing that condition.

Her purely mental powers and peculiarities were such
that, a hundred years before, she might have been burned
for a witch, and fifty years later might have been honoured
as a prophetess. But she missed the crest of the wave
both ways and fell in the trough; her views on religious
matters procured neither a witch's grave nor a prophet's
crown, but a sort of village contempt.

The Bible was her standard -- so far so good -- but
she emphasized the wrong parts of it. Instead of
magnifying the damnation of those who follow not the truth (as
the village understood it), she was content to semi-quote:

"Those that are not against me are with me," and
"A kind heart is the mark of His chosen." And then
she made a final utterance, an echo really of her father:
"If any man do anything sincerely, believing that thereby
he is worshipping God, he is worshipping God."

Then her fate was sealed, and all who marked the blazing
eyes, the hollow cheeks, the yet more hollow chest and