CHAPTER XVIII.
Disappointed in his matrimonial project, the Rev.Scatchard Vialls devoted himself with acrid zeal to the interests of the Conservative party.

He was not the most influential of the Polterham clerics, for women in general rather feared than liked him; a sincere ascetic, he moved but awkwardly in the regions of tea and tattle, and had an uncivil habit of speaking what he thought the truth without regard to time, place, or person.

Some of his sermons had given offence, with the result that several ladies betook themselves to gentler preachers.

But the awe inspired by his religious enthusiasm was practically useful now that he stood forward as an assailant of the political principles held in dislike by most Polterham church-goers.

There was a little band of district-visitors who stood by him the more resolutely for the coldness with which worldly women regarded him; and these persons, with their opportunities of making interest in poor households, constituted a party agency not to be despised.