The Reverend Septimus Walrond was returning from a professional visit to
a distant cottage of his remote and straggling parish upon the coast of
East Anglia. His errand had been sad, to baptise the dying infant of a
fisherman, which just as the rate was finished wailed once feebly and
expired in his arms. The Reverend Septimus was weeping over the sorrows
of the world. Tears ran down his white but rounded face, for he was
stout of habit, and fell upon his clerical coat that was green with age
and threadbare with use. Although the evening was so cold he held his
broad-brimmed hat in his hand, and the wind from the moaning sea tossed
his snow-white hair. He was talking to himself, as was his fashion on
these lonely walks.

"I think that fresh milk would have saved that child," he said, "but
how was poor Thomas to buy fresh milk at fourpence a quart? Laid up for
three months as he has been and with six children, how was he to buy
fresh milk? I ought to have given it to him. I could have done without
these new boots till spring, damp feet don't matter to an old man. But I
thought of my own comfort--the son that doth so easily beset me--and so
many to clothe and feed at home and poor Barbara, my darling Barbara,
hanging between life and death."

He sobbed and wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, then began
to pray, still aloud.

"O God of pity, in the name of the loving and merciful Christ, help me
and poor Thomas in our troubles."

"I ought to have put Thomas's name first--my selfishness again," he
ejaculated, then went on: