The rest of the day after receiving Faber’s communication, poor Mr. Drake roamed about like one on the verge of insanity, struggling to retain lawful dominion over his thoughts.  At times he was lost in apprehensive melancholy, at times roused to such fierce anger that he had to restrain himself from audible malediction.  The following day Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse attack of the fever than ever before, but he declared that the man should never again cross his threshold.  Dorothy concluded there had been a fresh outbreak between them of the old volcano.  He grew worse and worse, and did not object to her sending for Dr. Mather; but he did not do him much good.  He was in a very critical state, and Dorothy was miserable about him.  The fever was persistent, and the cough which he had had ever since the day that brought his illness, grew worse.  His friends would gladly have prevailed upon him to seek a warmer climate, but he would not hear of it.

Upon one occasion, Dorothy, encouraged by the presence of Dr. Mather, was entreating him afresh to go somewhere from home for a while.

“No, no:  what would become of my money?” he answered, with a smile which Dorothy understood.  The doctor imagined it the speech of a man whom previous poverty and suddenly supervening wealth had made penurious.

“Oh!” he remarked reassuringly, “you need not spend a penny more abroad than you do at home.  The difference in the living would, in some places, quite make up for the expense of the journey.”

The minister looked bewildered for a moment, then seemed to find himself, smiled again, and replied—­

“You do not quite understand me:  I have a great deal of money to spend, and it ought to be spent here in England where it was made—­God knows how.”

“You may get help to spend it in England, without throwing your life away with it,” said the doctor, who could not help thinking of his own large family.

“Yes, I dare say I might—­from many—­but it was given me to spend—­in destroying injustice, in doing to men as others ought to have done to them.  My preaching was such a poor affair that it is taken from me, and a lower calling given me—­to spend money.  If I do not well with that, then indeed I am a lost man.  If I be not faithful in that which is another’s, who will give me that which is my own?  If I can not further the coming of Christ, I can at least make a road or two, exalt a valley or two, to prepare His way before Him.”

Thereupon it was the doctor’s turn to smile.  All that was to him as if spoken in a language unknown, except that he recognized the religious tone in it.  “The man is true to his profession,” he said to himself, “—­as he ought to be of course; but catch me spending my money that way, if I had but a hold of it!”

His father died soon after, and he got a hold of the money he called his, whereupon he parted with his practice, and by idleness and self-indulgence, knowing all the time what he was about, brought on an infirmity which no skill could cure, and is now a grumbling invalid, at one or another of the German spas.  I mention it partly because many preferred this man to Faber on the ground that he went to church every Sunday, and always shook his head at the other’s atheism.