to Belminster on purpose. He preaches to-morrow in the nave. A series of evening lectures to working-men, and the dean takes his turn to-morrow."

“I will come,” said Everard; and he moved away, and stood gazing abstractedly at the ancient font, consumed with the strangest excitement.

"It is very old, sir," said a sweet voice behind him; and, turning, he found himself face to face with the chorister who sang the solo.

He was a slight, delicate lad, some ten years of age, with dark hair waved over his pure white brow, and beautiful blue eyes gazing with a strange pathos from the well-featured face; and the singular beauty of his voice was enhanced by the purity of his accent, which was that of a gentleman.

"Old indeed," returned Everard. that; it is too solid."

"Old Oliver couldn't batter

"You know, of course, that he smashed the west window," said the lad, pointing to the great window, with its singular pattern, formed by piecing the broken fragments of richly colored glass together.

Everard replied in the affirmative, and moved on, the boy accompanying him, and discussing the different objects of interest with singular intelligence.

"You do not tire of the cathedral, though you sing in it daily?" asked Everard.

"No, I never tire of it," he replied, gazing dreamily round; "it is such a beautiful place. I love the vastness of it. I spend hours here; it is my home."

He had insensibly stolen his small hand into Everard's, who was thrilled deeply by the warm, soft grasp, and he now led him on to show him an ancient tomb.

แ

"Have you been a chorister long?" Everard asked.

"Only since we came to Belminster, three years ago; then I was the smallest boy in the choir." He did not go to school, he said, in reply to a query; he had a tutor. "My name is Maitland," he added; "Everard Maitland."

Everard's hand tightened convulsively over the child's slight fingers, and hẹ gazed searchingly in his face, which betrayed no surprise at the intent gaze.

"Ah! the dean's son," he said, after a long pause.

"Yes," he replied, with a proud little air; "the dean's son. Do you know my father? Have you heard him preach?"

"Not of late."

"He is a very good father," said the boy; " and I am his only son. People think him great, but he is better than great; he is good. We have no mother. What time is it?" he added, as Everard drew out his watch to conceal the tumult that was stirring within him.

Everard silently turned the dial toward him for answer.

"I can hear it tick," said the child, regretfully; "but I can not see it.'

"Not see it!"-exclaimed Everard, in surprise.

"No, sir; I am blind. You are surprised?" he added, after a pause; "people always are. I was born blind, and I have been trained to be as independent as possible. I show it more in a strange place. I know every inch of the cathedral, I love it so."

"Blind!" echoed Everard, at last; "and you are his only son?" "His only son. It is a terrible grief to him. It is little to me; my life is very happy, and my father is so very kind. And they let me sing in the choir and play the organ. Few boys have such pleasures as I."

"You bear your affliction manfully," said Everard, laying his hand tenderly on the child's head and gazing thoughtfully on him for a space. "But how can you enjoy the cathedral if you can not see its beauty?"

"I can feel it. I have heard its different parts so often described, and I know its history so well. Then I can hear by the echoes how vast it is, and how lofty, and the way in which the music rolls about it describes its shape. I could feel you standing at the font just now, and I know when you are looking at me. I knew that you were a good man the moment you spoke. Your voice is familiar to me. You see, we blind people have other senses to make up, sir."

The child smiled as he said this, a smile that touched Everard to his heart's core. Cyril and Lilian smiled thus, but the child's smile had a sweetness beyond theirs, one which is only born of suffering.

They had now reached the open door, through which entered the reflected warmth of the sunshine, which the blind boy said he could feel, and here they parted.

"Good-by, sir," said the boy, pressing his hand, and directing upon him the strange unaware gaze of the blind. "We have had a charming talk,” he added, in Cyril's own fascinating manner. Good-by, dear little fellow, and God bless you," replied Everard, returning the pressure of the delicate hand. Stay," he added, as the child stepped out into the sunshine. "Had you not a brother named Ernest?"

แ

"they say he

was such a strong,

"Oh yes," he answered; healthy boy. He died when I was a baby. My poor father has lost many sons and daughters, and I can never be any thing but a care to him. He has only my sister to comfort him. Good-by, sir; I shall be late ;" and, taking off his hat once more, he sprang down the steps and across the pavement, to an iron railing which here fenced the turf. Everard watched him as he vaulted it easily, aud dashed, as seeing boys dash, headlong across the green, making a slight turn to avoid a collision with a solemn clergyman, who lifted his hat to him, and then flying straight under the slender arches of the Deanery entrance, where he vanished from sight.

"Poor young gentleman!" said the verger, who was standing behind Everard, chinking a shilling the child had given him. "Nothing pleases him so much as showing the cathedral to strangers, and keeping his blindness from them. Many and many a one he's took in. But he always gives a verger a shilling after taking a party round; he wouldn't take a man's bread out of his mouth. It's a sore trial to the dean, sir, you may depend upon it. It was trouble to his mother caused it, they say. Just before he was born she went through a deal in her mind, and was never the same again. And that affected the boy's nerves, specially the optic nerves and he was born blind. Pity, isn't it? We shall miss Master Everard when the dean is Bishop of Warham."

"No doubt," said Everard, moving abstractedly away, his eyes riveted on the Deanery; 66 no doubt."

Lilian had gradually ceased to mention Cyril in her letters; indeed, since Marion's death she had not mentioned him at all, and Everard had never during the whole of his imprisonment named the name of the man he had so loved, and for whom he had suffered so cruelly. And now he found him the great Dean Maitland, too great to be merely the Dean of Belminster; he belonged apparently to the higher order of deans, like Dean Swift and Dean Stanley, and was, moreover, Bishop-elect of Warham. And Warham was the

greatest see in England; its bishops had ranked as princes in olden days. There was but one greater dignity in the Church-that of archbishop. Everard paused opposite the Deanery, and looked long upon it, while a singular conflict of feelings raged within him.

On this very spot, eighteen years ago, Cyril himself had stood, an obscure curate, while Everard was undergoing his terrible ordeal before the judge, and had reflected, in spite of the tumult within him, upon the advantages of being a dean.

He had looked with keen outward observation, as Everard was looking now, on the majestic pile of the gray cathedral, rising above the sedate red roofs and gables of the quiet and dignified close; on the same elms and limes, leafless then in the March sunshine, and had heard the rooks cawing in their lofty circles overhead, with the same suggestions of boyhood and home and the breezy downs about Malbourne; there he had stood, though Everard did not know it, and fought an inward battle in which his soul's best powers were overthrown.

Some such battle raged within Everard now. He thought of his long agony, and the crimes which caused it; he thought of his heart's best friendship, and the treachery which betrayed it; he repeated to himself with various intonations of scorn and indignation, "Dean Maitland, Bishop of Warham; " he thought of the guileless child with his angel voice and his life-long affliction; he thought of his own broken health and ruined life; he thought of Lilian wasting her youth in loneliness, and asked himself how he could forgive the traitor for whose crime he had suffered the traitor who dressed in fine linen and dwelt in palaces among the greatest in the land, while the betrayed wore his heart out in a prison, clothed in the garb of shame, and herded with the scum and off-scouring of vice. He could not bear these distracting thoughts; he turned with a gesture of fierce indignation, and, striding hurriedly along the close, passed beneath the Gothic gateway, in whose angle was niched a tiny church, passed along, amid a crowd of happy schoolboys, in front of the college, and did not breathe freely till he found himself once more in the bustling High Street.

CHAPTER II.

THE Deanery drawing-room looked out upon a soft stretch of lawn, partly shaded by some magnificent trees, and bounded by a delicious old garden with warm red walls, on which fruit was ripening in the July sun. The mullioned casements, with their diamond panes, stood open to let in the sunny air laden with the scent of carnations, roses, and mignonette. All that refined taste, backed by a long purse, could do toward making a room beautiful and suggestive of art and culture, as well as perfectly comfortable, had been done to this room, which, as everybody knew, had been arranged by the dean and his twin sister. Nor did the apartment lack the crowning grace of a charming mistress; the dean's only daughter, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, but apparently much older.

She sat, becomingly dressed in some light, fresh material, near an open casement by a low table, on which a tea-service was placed, and was talking in the liquid Maitland voice to several ladies and three young and seemingly unmarried men, two of whom were clergymen, while the third, the evident object of the black coats' dislike, which he as evidently returned, had something about him which proclaimed the dashing hussar. He answered to the name of Lord Arthur.

"Benson," said Miss Maitland, addressing a servant, "tell the dean that I insist upon his coming in to tea. Say who are here. It would serve him right, Lady Louisa," she added, "if I got you to go and rout him out of his den."

"My dear child, the mere suggestion terrifies me!" returned the lady. "Imagine the audacity of rushing in upon the dean, when he might be making one of his lovely sermons or his clever books!

"By the way," interposed one of the curates, "what an appreciative notice there is in this week's Guardian of the dean's 'Epistle to the Romans!' Did you see it, Miss Maitland ?"

66 'Oh, you don't mean to say he is as clever as all that, to make a new Epistle to the Romans!" exclaimed a very young lady, whose simplicity was greatly admired.

The door now opened, and the dean appeared among his guests, making each feel that he or she was the special object of his welcoming words and smiles. After this greeting, his glance ran anxiously