‘I don’t know that; I rather think he’ll find he has no such power. Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows the world too well to get such a hornet’s nest about his ears.’

Mr Harding winced at the idea of the press. He had had enough of that sort of publicity, and was unwilling to be shown up a second time either as a monster or as a martyr. He gently remarked that he hoped the newspapers would not get hold of his name again, and then suggested that perhaps it would be better that he should abandon his object. ‘I am getting old,’ said he; ‘and after all I doubt whether I am fit to undertake new duties.’

‘New duties!’ said the archdeacon: ‘don’t I tell you there shall be no new duties?’

‘Or, perhaps, old duties either,’ said Mr Harding; ‘I think I will remain content as I am.’ The picture of Mr Slope carting away the rubbish was still present to his mind.

The archdeacon drank off his glass of claret, and prepared himself to be energetic. ‘I do hope,’ said he, ‘that you are not going to be so weak as to allow such a man as Mr Slope to deter you from doing what you know is your duty to do. You know that it is your duty to resume your place at the hospital now that parliament has so settled the stipend as to remove those difficulties which induced you to resign it. You cannot deny this; and should your timidity now prevent you from doing so, your conscience will hereafter never forgive you;’ and as he finished this clause of his speech, he pushed over the bottle to his companion.

‘Your conscience will never forgive you,’ he continued. ‘You resigned the place from conscientious scruples, scruples which I greatly respected, though I did not share them. All your friends respected them, and you left your old house as rich in reputation as you were ruined in fortune. It is now expected that you will return. Dr Gwynne was saying only the other day—’

‘Dr Gwynne does not reflect how much older a man I am now than when he last saw me.’

‘Old—nonsense!’ said the archdeacon; ‘you never thought yourself old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at the palace.’

‘I shall be sixty–five if I live till November,’ said Mr Harding.

‘And seventy–five if you live till November ten years,’ said the archdeacon. ‘And you bid fair to be as efficient then as you were ten years ago. But for heaven’s sake let us have no pretence in this matter. Your plea of old age is only a pretence. But you’re not drinking your wine. It is only a pretence. The fact is, you are half afraid of this Slope, and would rather subject yourself to comparative poverty and discomfort, than come to blows with a man who will trample on you, if you let him.’

‘I certainly don’t like coming to blows, if I can help it.’

‘Nor I neither—but sometimes we can’t help it. This man’s object is to induce you to refuse the hospital, that he may put some creature of his own into it; that he may show his power, and insult us all by insulting you, whose cause and character are so intimately bound up with that of the chapter. You owe it to us all to resist him in this, even if you have no solicitude for yourself. But surely, for your own sake, you will not be so lily–livered as to fall into this trap which he has baited for you, and let him take the very bread out of your mouth without a struggle.’

Mr Harding did not like being called lily–livered, and was rather inclined to resent it. ‘I doubt there is any true courage,’ said he, ‘in squabbling for money.’

‘If honest men did not squabble for money, in this world of ours, the dishonest men would get it all; and I do not see that the cause of virtue would be much improved. No,—we must use the means which we