For many years he had been a martyr to a particularly painful kind of rheumatism.

He never spoke of it if he could help it, and tried never to let it interfere with his work, but his eyes had the patient look that suffering brings, and his face often wore a twisted, humorous smile, as if he were laughing at his own pain.

He was now sixty-four.

His sons, so far as they were allowed, had smoothed the way for their parents, but they could not induce their father to retire from the ministry.

"I'll give up when I begin to feel myself a nuisance," he would say.