Then darkness fell upon his eyes and he felt sad and sick. Glory had
disappointed him. She was vain, she was worldly, she was incapable of the
higher things; she would never know what a sacrifice he had made for her;
she would think nothing of him now; but he would go on all the same, the
more earnestly because the devil had drawn a bow at him and the arrow had
gone in up to the feathers.

"With God's help I shall nail my colours to the mast," he said.

Thus he made up his mind to follow the unrolling of the scroll. He had
the strength called character. The Church had been his beacon before, but
now it was to be his refuge.

He found no difficulty in making the necessary preparations. For a year
he read the Anglican divines--Jeremy Taylor, Hooker, Butler, Waterland,
Pearson, and Pusey--and when the time came for his ordination his uncle,
the Earl of Erin, who was now Prime Minister, obtained him a title to a
curacy under the popular and influential Canon Wealthy of All Saints,
Belgravia. The Bishop of London gave letters dimissory to the Bishop of
Sodor and Man, by whom he was examined and ordained.

On the morning of his departure for London his father, with whom there
had in the meantime been trying scenes, left him this final word of
farewell: "As I understand that you intend to lead the life of poverty, I
presume that you do not need your mother's dowry, and I shall hold myself
at liberty to dispose of it elsewhere, _unless_ you require it for the
use of the young lady who is, I hear, to go up with you."