pain of his sympathy with the reflection that at least neither of
them was a curate of the church of England who knew positively
nothing of the foundation upon which that church professed to stand.

How he got through the Sunday he never could have told. What times a
man may get through--he knows not how! As soon as it was over, it
was all a mist--from which gleamed or gloomed large the face of
George Bascombe with its keen unbelieving eyes and scornful lips.
All the time he was reading the prayers and lessons, all the time he
was reading his uncle's sermon, he had not only been aware of those
eyes, but aware also of what lay behind them--seeing and reading
the reflex of himself in Bascombe's brain; but nothing more whatever
could he recall.

Like finger-posts dim seen, on a moorland journey, through the
gathering fogs, Sunday after Sunday passed. I will not request my
reader to accompany me across the confusions upon which was blowing
that wind whose breath was causing a world to pass from chaos to
cosmos. One who has ever gone through any experience of the kind
himself, will be able to imagine it; to one who has not, my
descriptions would be of small service: he would but shrink from the
representation as diseased and of no general interest. And he would
be so far right, that the interest in such things must be most
particular and individual, or none at all.

The weeks passed and seemed to bring him no light, only increased
earnestness in the search after it. Some assurance he must find
soon, else he would resign his curacy, and look out for a situation
as tutor.