Was it with this feeling that the fancy took possession of him, to show the letter to Tregarva?
I hope not--perhaps he did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I wish to make them, face manfully a real awful question now racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able to answer the sophist fiend--for honestly, such he is--when their time comes, as come it will.

At least he wanted to test at once Tregarva's knowledge and his logic.

As for his 'faith,' alas! he had not so much reverence for it as to care what effect Luke's arguments might have there.

'The whole man,' quoth Lancelot to himself, 'is a novel phenomenon; and all phenomena, however magnificent, are surely fair subjects for experiment.

Magendie may have gone too far, certainly, in dissecting a live dog--but what harm in my pulling the mane of a dead lion ?' So he showed the letter to Tregarva as they were fishing together one day--for Lancelot had been installed duly in the Whitford trout preserves'-- Tregarva read it slowly; asked, shrewdly enough, the meaning of a word or two as he went on; at last folded it up deliberately, and returned it to its owner with a deep sigh.