“In that case, why should not your God help me?”

“Why not?  I think he will.  But it may have to be in a way you will not like.”

“Well, well! good night.  Talk is but talk, whatever be the subject of it.—­I beg your pardon,” he added, shaking hands with the minister and his daughter; “I did not see you come in.  Good night.”

“I won’t allow that talk is only talk, Faber,” Wingfold called after him with a friendly laugh.  Then turning to Mr. Drake, “Pardon me,” he said, “for treating you with so much confidence.  I saw you come in, but believed you would rather have us end our talk than break it off.”

“Certainly.  But I can’t help thinking you grant him too much, Mr. Wingfold,” said the minister seriously.

“I never find I lose by giving, even in argument,” said the curate.  “Faber rides his hobby well, but the brute is a sorry jade.  He will find one day she has not a sound joint in her whole body.”

The man who is anxious to hold every point, will speedily bring a question to a mere dispute about trifles, leaving the real matter, whose elements may appeal to the godlike in every man, out in the cold.  Such a man, having gained his paltry point, will crow like the bantam he is, while the other, who may be the greater, perhaps the better man, although in the wrong, is embittered by his smallness, and turns away with increased prejudice.  Human nature can hardly be blamed for its readiness to impute to the case the shallowness of its pleader.  Few men do more harm than those who, taking the right side, dispute for personal victory, and argue, as they are sure then to do, ungenerously.  But even genuine argument for the truth is not preaching the gospel, neither is he whose unbelief is thus assailed, likely to be brought thereby into any mood but one unfit for receiving it.  Argument should be kept to books; preachers ought to have nothing to do with it—­at all events in the pulpit.  There let them hold forth light, and let him who will, receive it, and him who will not, forbear.  God alone can convince, and till the full time is come for the birth of the truth in a soul, the words of even the Lord Himself are not there potent.

“The man irritates me, I confess,” said Mr. Drake.  “I do not say he is self-satisfied, but he is very self-sufficient.”

“He is such a good fellow,” said Wingfold, “that I think God will not let him go on like this very long.  I think we shall live to see a change upon him.  But much as I esteem and love the man, I can not help a suspicion that he has a great lump of pride somewhere about him, which has not a little to do with his denials.”

Juliet’s blood seemed seething in her veins as she heard her lover thus weighed, and talked over; and therewith came the first rift of a threatened breach betwixt her heart and the friends who had been so good to her.  He had done far more for her than any of them, and mere loyalty seemed to call upon her to defend him; but she did not know how, and, dissatisfied with herself as well as indignant with them, she maintained an angry silence.