"You press me," he said, "very well, I will tell you. I don't believe Lothian is a good man. It is a stern and terrible thing to say,—God grant I am mistaken!—but he appears to me to write of supreme things with insincerity. Not vulgarly, you'll understand. Not with his tongue in his cheek, but without the conviction that imposes conduct, and perhaps even with his heart in his mouth!"
"Conduct?"
". . . I fear I am saying too much."
"Hardly to me! Then Mr. Lothian—?"
"He drinks," the Priest said bluntly, "you're sure to hear of it in some indirect way since you are going to stay in the village for six months. But that's the truth of it!"
The face of Dr. Morton Sims suddenly became quite pale. His brown eyes glittered as if with an almost uncontrollable excitement.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, and there was something so curious in his voice that the clergyman was alarmed at what he had said. He knew, and could know, nothing of what was passing in the other's mind. A scrupulously fair and honest man within his lights, he feared that he had made too harsh a statement—particularly to a man who thought that even an after-dinner glass of port was an error in hygiene!
"I don't mean to say that he gets drunk," Medley continued hastily, "but he really does excite himself and whip himself up to work by means of spirits."
The clergyman hesitated. The doctor spurred him on.
"Most interesting to the scientific man—please go on."