"Yes; and it went so well. My voice was like a bird flying up to heaven's gate. Father, it is nice to have such a voice; it goes as if it couldn't help it. And I showed such a nice fellow over the cathedral, and took him in thoroughly."

"Poor lad; poor dear lad! And what is going on now?" "Virgil with the Herr. And after dinner Marry has promised to accompany our violins. And what do you think? The duke has a Stradivarius, and Lord Arthur is to take me to Dewhurst to hear it, and perhaps touch it. How hot and wet your forehead is! Is your head bad? And I bothering?"

The boy's sightless gaze met his father's glance of passionate tenderness, all unconscious of the agony it looked upon; and the dean turned away, for he could not bear it. Marion's laugh came floating in again with its masculine echo, and the child's face brightened.

"Marry and Arthur," he said.

The dean pushed the dark hair from the boy's brow, kissed and blessed him, and dismissed him under the plea of a headache and desire for quiet, watching him leave the room with a look of wistful compassion. He loved his blind son better than anything on earth, but he remembered how he had held the other lad in his arms at the font, and how the infant's touch had stirred the first keen thrill of fatherhood in his heart.

"I dare not, oh, I dare not! It would be utter ruin!" he murmured to himself, in reply to some inward suggestion.

The young Canadian meantime left the Deanery, and, placing his hat firmly on his head, turned to take one comprehensive look at it before he went round by the cloisters and disappeared.

"Je-rusalem!" he exclaimed, "if my sainted parent isn't a firstrate actor and a cool hand! Now I know where I got my brains from."

The dean sat on, with his head buried in his hands, and his heart torn, with the deadly missive before him, and utter ruin staring him in the face, while the long gold bars of sunshine lengthened and fell across him unheeded, and the pleasant chime-music told quarter after quarter.

"Oh, my God!" he groaned, "but one sin in a youth so spotless! And have I not repented? And are all these years of agony nothing? And the work I have done and have still to do! And the powers vouchsafed to me! Is there no mercy-none?"

An hour ago he had been so secure, so unsuspecting-the old ghost laid for ever, he thought. And now? To go to that public hospital, he, to whom no disguise was possible, whose very fame would pursue him and point him out with a finger of fire, to meet the dying gaze of that hated woman, to hear her terrible reproach! How could he? And that boy, with his strong self-will and his ambition-Dean Maitland knew too well whence he got those qualities he would hunt him down without pity. Why not cut the knot for ever? He had poison at hand.

The low mellow murmurs of a gong rose on his ear (there were no bells or any harsh sounds at the Deanery); he heard Marion's voice calling to Everard, and the tap of her light foot as she ran down-stairs, only just in time for dinner. He could not take his life just then; he had to invent an excuse for not appearing at dinner.

The perilous moment past, better thoughts came to him. He leaned out of the window and breathed the cool dusk air. A wakened bird twittered happily before turning again to its rest; Everard's pure voice floated out from an open window, with the words of an anthem he was learning. The dean fell down before the crucifix, and tried to pray. He lay there in the darkness while his children's music sounded through the open windows, till the moonlight stole in through the lattice upon him, and there was silence in the house, save for the ticking of clocks and the deep breathing of sleepers. Then he arose, haggard and exhausted, but resolved to do his duty, whatever it might cost him.

Striking a light, he went to a cabinet inlaid with delicate mosaic, and touched a spring. A hidden compartment was disclosed, whence he took a bottle and a glass on which measures were engraved. Carefully pouring out an exact quantity of dark brown liquid, he drank it and replaced the spring.

The dean was a total abstainer; he knew the world too well to hope for influence over the popular mind unless he bowed to the idol of the hour, and frequently observed to friends that he abstained from wine "for the sake of example." For the same reason, probably, nobody knew anything about the little bottle of dark liquid.

66

CHAPTER III.

WHEN Everard reached the High Street, his attention was caught by an announcement in a bookseller's window, "Dean Maitland's new work," and, on going up to the shop, he saw the volumes fresh from the publisher's, in their plain brown binding. It was the third volume of the dean's "Commentary on the Pauline Epistles." There also he saw, in every variety of binding suited to luxurious devotion, his other works: his "Secret Penitent," his Knight's Expiation, and other Poems," his "Lyra Sacra," his "Individual Sanctity," his "Verses for the Suffering," "Parish Sermons," " "Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey," together with endless tracts and pamphlets. Everard purchased the "Secret Penitent" and the "Expiation," after turning over the leaves of the sermons, wondering at their commonplace character, and listening to a long eulogy on the author from the bookseller. Then he walked up the hill to the station, dipping into his new purchases as he went.

Having claimed his modest possessions, he had them conveyed to the George Inn, where he dined in a first-floor room with a bowwindow looking out on the sunny, bustling High Street; and while he dined he turned over the leaves of the dean's book, recognizing Cyril's style and certain peculiar turns of thought and traits of character as he read, and feeling more and more that neither the poems nor the devotions were the work of a conscious hypocrite. From an artistic point of view, they were not calculated to take the world by storm; but there was an unmistakable ring of reality throughout, which entitled them to respect, and accounted for the influence Dean Maitland was said to exercise over men's minds. The "Secret Penitent" had passed through many editions. It must have comforted the souls of thousands of human beings; it could only have been written by a man of deep religious convictions and high-toned morality.

Everard sat in the bow-window, listening to the hum of the streets and the cadences of the bells, and pondering with a bewildered mind over this enigma of human character; and again he wondered, as he had so often wondered during the earlier days of miserable brooding in his captivity, how it was possible that such a man could have sinned so heavily? He recalled his sensitive

refinement, his excessive exaltation of the spiritual above the animal, his scorn for the facile follies of youth, his piety, the purity of his emotions, his almost womanly tenderness, and marveled with a bewildered amazement. He had himself not been unacquainted with the fires of temptation, but his life had been unscathed, nevertheless, because he had been strong enough to resist. But that such fires should have power over Cyril seemed incredible, especially when he remembered his austere, almost ascetic life.

Equally strange did it appear to Cyril himself, as he lay prostrate before the crucifix, face to face with his sin, and wondering if indeed he were the same man as he who went astray twenty years ago.

Yet the first sin was simple enough, giving the components of Cyril's character and Alma's, the strange and inexplicable entanglement of the animal and the spiritual in human nature, and the blind madness in which passion, once kindled, involves the whole being.

Alma was then innocent of heart; but what is innocence before the fierce flame of temptation, unless guarded by high principle and severe self-mastery? Cyril could not live without adoration, and, when Marion turned from him, he caught at that unconsciously offered him elsewhere, telling himself that there could be no harm to such as he, above temptation as he was, in watching the impassioned light of Alma's beautiful eyes, and that pity required him to pour some kindness into so stricken and guileless a heart.

So in those idle days of the Shotover curacy he trod the primrose path of dalliance with a careless and unguarded heart, and did not waken to a sense of danger until he found himself and another precipitated downward into the very gulfs of hell. The shock of the fall sobered him, and suddenly quenched the delirium of the senses which had hitherto blinded him, and left a mingled loathing and contempt in its place; and the abasement of his own fall, and the terrible sense of having wrought the ruin of another, stirred the yet unwakened depths of his nature, and kindled the first faint beginnings of deeper moral and spiritual life. Had he but possessed the courage and strength of will to accept the consequences, to confess where confession was due, and to atone as far as atonement was possible, both he and the more innocent partner of his guilt might have recovered moral health, and even happiness, and he might have led the noblest if not perhaps the happiest of lives, deriving strength from his very weakness.

For his life had till then been untempted, and all his impulses had been good and beautiful. But he was a coward, and loved the praise of men. And more than all things and persons he loved Cyril Maitland. He was also a self-deceiver; he drugged his conscience, and was dragged into the tortuous windings of his own inward deceit; and thus he fell from depth to depth, like Lucifer, falling all the deeper because of the height from which he fell, until he finished in the perversion of his moral being with the deed of a Judas. Of that last iniquity he never dared think.

Everard read and pondered, and pondered and read, and was filled with awe and pity. Then, laying the books aside with a sense of joy in his newly gained freedom, he took his hat and sauntered along the dusk, yet unlighted streets, letting his fancy dwell on brighter themes.

He had not gone far before he met a man who looked curiously at him, turned after he had passed, and again studied him intently, and finally, retracing his steps, accosted him.

"It is Dr. Everard, surely?" he said.

"That is my name," replied Everard, a little startled at the unfamiliar sound of the long unspoken name. "But I have not the pleasure of knowing yours," he added, scanning the figure and face of the respectable tradesman.

“Think of Dartmoor and No. 56," replied the tradesman, in a low tone.

A light of recognition broke over Everard's face, and he clasped the offered hand with a cordial greeting.

"It is no wonder that you did not recognize me," the man said; "thanks to you, I make rather a different figure to what I did on the moor. But yours is a face not to be forgotten."

"You are doing well, apparently, Smithson."

"I have a linen-draper's shop, and I married a good girl, and we have two little ones, and we pay our way," he replied. "If you are going my way-I was just strolling up the hill for a breath of air I will tell you all about it. You know, doctor, I could never have had the courage to face the world again but for you. Your words were always in my ears, 'The only atonement we can make is to accept the consequences manfully and conquer them.' It was uphill work, and I was often ready to throw up the sponge; but I stuck to it, and got through. Everybody knows my story, but they have mostly forgotten it. Many a time when I was ready