CHAPTER XII.

AN INCIDENT.





It was a fair morning of All Hallows' summer. The trees were nearly
despoiled, but the grass was green, and there was a memory of spring
in the low sad sunshine: even the sunshine, the gladdest thing in
creation, is sad sometimes. There was no wind, nothing to fight
with, nothing to turn his mind from its own miserable perplexities.
How endlessly his position as a clergyman, he thought, added to his
miseries! Had he been a man unpledged, he could have taken his own
time to think out the truths of his relations; as it was, he felt
like a man in a coffin: out he must get, but had not room to make a
single vigorous effort for freedom! It did not occur to him yet
that, uupressed from without, his honesty unstung, he might have
taken more time to find out where he was than would have been either
honest or healthful.

He came to a stile where his path joined another that ran both ways,
and there seated himself, just as the same strange couple I have
already described as met by Miss Lingard and Mr. Bascombe approached
and went by. After they had gone a good way, he caught sight of
something lying in the path, and going to pick it up, found it was a
small manuscript volume.