“You misapprehend me, father; you often do,” said Angel with a little impatience.  “Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their being old.  Some of the wise even among themselves ’exclaim against their own succession,’ as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached to them.”

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called d’Urberville, the young man developed the most culpable passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have made him know better.  A knowledge of his career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part of the country preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to the delinquent on his spiritual state.  Though he was a stranger, occupying another’s pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St Luke:  “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!” The young man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

“Dear father,” he said sadly, “I wish you would not expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!”

“Pain?” said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of self-abnegation.  “The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor, foolish young man.  Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or even his blows?  ’Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.’  Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at this present hour.”

“Not blows, father?  He did not proceed to blows?”

“No, he did not.  Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state of intoxication.”

“No!”

“A dozen times, my boy.  What then?  I have saved them from the guilt of murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived to thank me, and praise God.”

“May this young man do the same!” said Angel fervently.  “But I fear otherwise, from what you say.”

“We’ll hope, nevertheless,” said Mr Clare.  “And I continue to pray for him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never meet again.  But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in his heart as a good seed some day.”