"My child, have little doubt that both religion and duty point in one
direction and with no faltering hands," he said, in his stately way.
"Communicate with the young man, inform him that conversation with
myself has taken place; then he can hardly maintain an attitude of
doubt, either to the exalted convictions that have led to your decision,
or to the propriety of it. And, further, do not omit an opportunity of
well-doing, but conclude your letter with a word of counsel. Pray him to
seek a Guide to his future life, the only Guide able to lead him aright.
I mean his Mother Church. No man who turns his back upon her can be
either virtuous or happy. I mourned his defection from our choir some
years ago. You see I forget nobody. My eyes are everywhere, as they
ought to be. Would that he could be whipped back to the House of
God--with scorpions, if necessary! There is a cowardice, a lack of
sportsmanlike feeling, if I may so express it, in these fallings away
from the Church of our fathers. It denotes a failing of intellect amid
the centres of human activity. There is a blight of unbelief abroad--a
nebulous, pestilential rationalism. Acquaint him with these facts; they
may serve to re-establish one whose temperament must be regarded as
abnormal in the light of his great eccentricity of action. Now farewell,
and God be with you."

The rotund, grey-whiskered clergyman waved his hand; Miller Lyddon and
his daughter left the vicarage; while both heard, as it seemed, his
studied phrases and sonorous voice rolling after them all the way home.
But poor Phoebe felt that the main issues as to conscience were now only
too clear; her last anchor was wrenched from its hold, and that night,
through a mist of unhappy tears, she succumbed, promised to marry John
Grimbal and be queen of the red castle now rising under Cranbrook's
distant heights.