Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/234

 "I am tired," said Mr. Hale. "But it is not Milton air. I'm fifty-five years of age, and that little fact of itself accounts for any loss of strength."

"Nonsense! I'm upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of strength, either bodily or mental. Don't let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! why, you're quite a young man."

Mr. Hale shook his head. "These last few years!". said he. But after a minute's pause, he raised himself from his half recumbent position, in one of Mr. Bell's luxurious easy-chairs, and said with a kind of trembling earnestness:

"Bell! you're not to think, that if I could have foreseen all that would come of my change of opinion, and my resignation of my living—no! not even if I could have known how she would have suffered,—that I would undo it—the act of open acknowledgment that I no longer held the same faith as the church in which I was a priest. As I think now, even if I could have foreseen that cruellest martyrdom of suffering, through the sufferings of one whom I loved, I would have done just the same as far as that step of openly leaving the church went. I might have done differently, and acted more wisely, in all that I subsequently did for my family. But I don't think God endued me with over-much wisdom or strength," he added, falling back into his old position.

Mr. Bell blew his nose ostentatiously before answering. Then he said:

"He gave you strength to do what your conscience told you was right; and I don't see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or wisdom