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 tell me this—will it be just the same for him as if you had baptized him?’

Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no. Yet the dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined to affect his nobler impulses—or rather those that he had left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to the man.

‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘it will be just the same.’

‘Then will you give him a Christian burial?’ she asked quickly.

The Vicar felt himself cornered.

Hearing of the baby’s illness, he had conscientiously come to the house after nightfall to perform the rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess’s father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity.

‘Ah—that’s another matter,’ he said.