CHAPTER XLII.
AN EVIL EYE LOOKS ON THE VICAR.
The Vicar's troubles grew and gathered, as such
troubles will; and the attorney gave him his advice;
and the business of the Rev. William Wylder gradually
came to occupy a good deal of his time. Here was a new
reason for wishing to know really how Mark Wylder
stood. William had undoubtedly the reversion of the
estate; but the attorney suspected sometimes — just from
a faint phrase which had once escaped Stanley Lake — as
the likeliest solution, that Mark Wylder had made a left-
handed marriage somehow and somewhere, and that a sub-
terranean wife and family would emerge at an unlucky
moment, and squat upon that remainder, and defy the
world to disturb them. This gave to his plans and deal-
ings in relation to the Vicar a degree of irresolution for-
eign to his character, which was grim and decided enough
when his data were clear, and his object in sight.
William Wylder, meanwhile, was troubled, and his
mind clouded by more sorrows than one.
Poor William Wylder had those special troubles which
haunt nervous temperaments and speculative minds, when
under the solemn influence of religion. What the great
Luther called, without describing them, his "tribulations"
— those dreadful doubts and apathies which at times men-
ace and darken the radiant fabric of faith, and fill the
soul with nameless horrors. The worst of these is, that
unlike other troubles, they are not always safely to be