My tutor, Mr. Williams, afterwards became rector of Widecombe-in-the-Moor. He was a man of considerable ability, but was not calculated by nature or in mind to be a parish priest, least of all in the country. Possibly enough in a town he might have made himself useful as an organizer, and have left the spiritual work to be done by a curate. He was forced to take Holy Orders by his father, who designed to give him a family living, but died before he could present him to it. The result was that he was never more than half-hearted in Orders. He found it a bore to visit, and a bore to preach. His abilities, and these he had, found no vent. The living of Widecombe is in the presentation of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. My experience of Dean and Chapter and, in the past, episcopal tenure of advowsons as well, is that these patrons were formerly ever on the look out for square men to thrust into round holes, or round men for square holes. Williams, at Widecombe was cut off from all society, pinched between tremendous hills, with no pursuits, no neighbours, few books. He had no interest in the people, the place, the church; in the natural history, the antiquities of the Moor. "I feel," said he to me one day, "like Noah in the Ark, surrounded by beasts, but, unlike him, without a dove in it—only jackdaws, magpies, starlings—and," after a pause, "any number of geese."
The English church at Pau was one shared with the French Protestants. It had been built and endowed by the Duchess of Gordon, a Presbyterian. In it, against the walls, hung portraits of Calvin and Beza. The chaplain was a Mr. Hedges, of the Colonial-and-Continental-Church Society type. That suffices as a description. Over one of his sermons I might have won a bet of two francs. I said to my brother, as we were walking to church on the 13th Sunday after Trinity, "We are going to dip in Abana and Pharpar to-day. Hedges is sure to give us that." "How can you tell?" answered my brother. "I bet you a couple of francs he does not."
Sure as a gun, no sooner was the chaplain up in the pulpit, than he gave out: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage."
I nudged my brother and held out to him my palm. But I did not take the two francs, for I said: "It was a chance. We
