Roland Graeme: Knight — Agnes Maule Machar

The Reverend Cecil Chillingworth sat in his quiet study, absorbed in the preparation of his next Sunday evening's discourse. It was to be one of those powerful pulpit "efforts"-so comprehensive in its grasp, so catholic in its spirit, so suggestive in its teachings-for which Mr. Chillingworth, to quote the Minton Minerva, "was deservedly famous." In fact, this "fame" of his sat already like "black care" on his shoulders; or, as the Minton Minerva might have said, had it only known the secret, like a jockey determined on all occasions to whip and spur him up to his own record. The strongest forces are often those of which the subject of them is least conscious, and, though Mr. Chillingworth would not have admitted it to himself, he stood in mortal dread of "falling off" in his reputation as a preacher. Should that happen, he would feel-or so he would have put it to himself-that his "usefulness was gone," a reason that would have justified to him every possible effort to avert the calamity.