They stopped together alone till the dusk came down and Mannering
returned. He stayed but a few minutes, and presently they heard
his car start again, while that containing the departing guests
and Henry Lennox immediately followed it.

In due course Septimus May returned to Chadlands with him. The
clergyman had heard of his son's end, and went immediately to see
the dead man. There Mary joined him, and witnessed his self-control
under very shattering grief. He was thin, clean-shaven--a grey man
with smouldering eyes and an expression of endurance. A fanatic
in faith, by virtue of certain asperities of mind and a critical
temperament, he had never made friends, won his parish into close
ties, nor advanced the cause of his religion as he had yearned to
do. With the zeal of a reformer, he had entered the ministry in
youth; but while commanding respect for his own rule of conduct and
the example he set his little flock, their affection he never won.
The people feared him, and dreaded his stern criticism. Once
certain spirits, smarting under pulpit censure, had sought to be
rid of him; but no grounds existed on which they could eject the
reverend gentleman or challenge his status. He remained, therefore,
as many like him remain, embedded in his parish and unknown beyond
it. He was a poor student of human nature and life had dimmed his
old ambitions, soured his hopes; but it had not clouded his faith.
With a passionate fervor he believed all that he tried to teach,
and held that an almighty, all loving and all merciful God
controlled every destiny, ordered existence for the greatest and
least, and allowed nothing to happen upon earth that was not the
best that could happen for the immortal beings He had created in
His own image. Upon this assurance fell the greatest, almost the