CHAPTER XVIII
A CONFESSION
The vicar was in the throes of a new sermon when the news reached him. He had been at work on the sermon all the day, for its delivery was to be a great effort. Hence, it was long after dark before the tidings filtered through to his study.
Mr. Seccombe laid down his pen, and looked thoughtful. The news sent his thoughts running along an entirely new track. The thread of his sermon was cut clean through, and every effort he made to pick up the ends and splice them proved a dismal failure. From the triumphs of grace his thoughts drifted away to the mysteries of Providence.
He pulled himself up with a jerk at length. How much had God to do, after all, with what men called Providence? Was it the purpose of God that his boy Julian should grow into a fighter? Was it part of the same purpose that he should be killed in a distant land by an Arab's lance; that out of that should grow the commercial ruin of one of the saintliest men in the parish; and that his wife, in the closing years of her life, should be driven into the cold shadow of the workhouse?
John Seccombe got up from his chair and began to pace up and down the study.
He was interrupted in his meditations by a feeble knock on his study door.
"Come in," he said, pausing in his walk; and he waited a little impatiently for the door to open.
"A young man wants to see you, sir," the housemaid said, opening the door just wide enough to show her face.