Everard, who was so placed by a cluster of pillars as to be half shielded by them, advanced his head and gazed over his hymn-book; so that he could see the preacher without much of his own face being seen, and his first glance at the face, islanded from the dusk in the ruddy glow of gaslight, told him that he must have recognized Cyril anywhere, and set his heart beating vehemently with a mixture of love and hate.

At forty-three Dean Maitland was in his fullest prime; the years had ripened instead of wasting and crushing him, as they had Everard. The dark brown hair waved as gracefully as in his youth over his broad, clear brow, while the few silver threads in it were unseen; the finely cut, closely shaven features were but little sharpened in outline; the light blue eyes were more sunken, and they glowed with an intenser radiance. The old face was there, but the expression was altered; there was a hard austerity about the mouth when in repose that verged upon cruelty, though no one who had ever seen those fine lips curve into their winning smile when speaking could accuse them of anything harsher than a severe purity quite in character with the man's writings and his calling, and during the most impassioned glances of the wonderfully expressive eyes they had a certain gleam which suggested the quaint and quiet humor which made the dean so delightful in society.

Yet, over all the face and in the whole bearing, Everard saw an expression he had never seen before, and which he could not analyze, but which struck him with keen pain, and called to his mind Milton's description of the fallen seraph on whose faded cheek sate

care.

All that evening Everard's mind was haunted by the image of the fallen angel, once the brightest of the sons of morning, weighted with his unutterable woe, and yearning for the lost glory that could never more be his.

In the mean time, the closing notes of the hymn died away in the long and lingering cadences of the organ, the great congregation seated itself with a subdued rustle and murmur, and the dean, in his magnificent voice and pure enunciation, gave out his text.

CHAPTER IV.

THE Voice which had been so full of music in Cyril Maitland's youth had now become not only an instrument of great compass and rich tone, but it was played by an artist who was a perfect master of his craft. It was said of the Bishop of Belminster that he could pronounce the mystic word "Mesopotamia" in such a manner as to affect his auditors to tears; but of the dean it might be averred that his pronunciation of "Mesopotamia" caused the listeners' hearts to vibrate with every sorrow and every joy they had ever known, all in the brief space of time occupied by the utterance of that affecting word. Everard had heard this saying in Belminster, and knew well what Cyril's voice was of old, but he was quite unprepared for the tremendous rush of emotion that overwhelmed him when the dean opened his clear-cut lips and said, with the pathos the words demanded, "We took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends."

He then paused, as his custom was, to let the words sink deeply into his hearer's minds before he began his discourse, and Everard's very life seemed to pause with him, while he felt himself shaken in his innermost depths. Then he remembered that Cyril's passionate sermon upon innocence was the last he had heard from him. Since that he had heard only the discourses of prison chaplains to an accompaniment of whispered blasphemy and filth. Once more he saw the little church at Malbourne, the beautiful young priest offering the chalice to the kneeling people in the wintry sun-gleams; once more he saw the shadowy figure in the afternoon dusk, uttering his agonized appeals to the startled listeners below.

"Yes, my brothers," said the dean (he eschewed "brethren," as both conventional and obsolete, and dwelt with a loving intonation on the word "brothers "), "Jesus Christ and Judas took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends, strange as it appears to us, difficult as it is to realize a fact so startling, since in all the whole range of the world's tragic history there has never been found a character so vile as the one or so spotless as the other.

"Yet they were not only friends, but they actually took sweet counsel together. Picture that to yourselves, dear brothers: Christ had pleasant conversations with Judas, asked his opinion on high and holy subjects, listened to his words, as you and I listen to the

words of those dear and near to us. Was there ever a more strangely assorted pair? And yet "-the dean paused, and sent the penetrating radiance of his gaze sweeping over the mass of upturned faces before him-"it may be that even now, to-night, with these eyes of mine, I see among you, my brothers, in this very house of God, another pair strangely like that mentioned by David in his prophecy-some loyal follower of Christ taking sweet counsel and walking as a friend with such a one as Judas, money-loving, ambitious, false; musing even now, with the echoes of psalms and holy words in his ears, how he may betray the friend who trusts and loves him. Alas, my brothers, how often is such a companionship seen; and how often, how sadly often, is the guileless friend whose trust and love is betrayed a woman! Nay,' I hear you say, 'we have our faults, we don't pretend to be saints, but we are not Judases.' Dare you say that you are no Judas?" he added, in sharp, incisive tones, while his glance seemed to single some individual from the throng and to pierce to his very marrow-“you, who sold your wife's happiness and your children's bread for a pot of beer? or you?" and here the penetrating gaze seemed to single out another, while the preacher launched at him another sharp denunciation of some homely, everyday vice, using the most direct and forcible words the language contains to give vigor to his censures, till the cold sweat stood upon rugged brows, some women wept furtively, and the dean's keen glance perceived the inward tremblings of many a self-convicted sinner.

The preacher then observed that the popular conception of Judas as a truculent thief whose ruffianly character was ill concealed by his thorough-paced hypocrisy was probably false, and pointed out that Judas must have appeared to the world in which he lived a highly respectable and well-conducted person, if not a very saint. Nay, it was his own opinion that Judas was actually a very superior being, a man of lofty aspirations and pure life, a patriot-one who looked ardently for the promised Messiah, and had sufficient faith to recognize him in the son of the Nazarene carpenter. Why, he asked his auditors, if he had not been all this, should he have joined that little band of obscure men, those peasants and fishers, those men of austere morality and lofty converse, who had left all to follow the young peasant Prophet who had not even a roof to shelter Him?

He drew a beautiful sketch of the sweet and simple brotherhood of disciples clustering about the Master, who seemed to have

inspired them up to the moment of the crucifixion more with tender and compassionate human devotion than with awe and worship, and with whom they lived in such close and intimate communion, taking sweet counsel together on the loftiest subjects, and yet shar ing the most trivial events of everyday life; and asked his hearers if they thought a mere money-lover and traitor could have endured such a fellowship, or been endured by it. But if Judas were indeed worthy to be chosen as one of that small and select band (and it was an undoubted fact that he was thought worthy, and tenderly loved up to the last by his Divine Master), how was it that he fell into so black a sin, and stamped his name upon all time as a symbol of the utmost degradation of which man is capable?

"Ah! my brothers," said the dean, "he was a hypocrite, but so consummate a hypocrite that he deceived himself. He knew that he loved God and his Master and Friend, but he did not know, or would not know, that he loved mammon-the riches of this world and its pomps and vanities, its fleeting honors and transient foamflake of fame-better. The bag naturally fell to him because it had no attractions for the disciples whose hearts were set upon heavenly treasure only. The renown of the miracles he witnessed spread so that idlers flocked as to a show to see them; and this and the hope of the revival of the Jewish monarchy which filled the minds of all the disciples till after Calvary stimulated the man's ambition, which he probably mistook for devout zeal till that terrible hour, when the contempt and hatred which fell upon his Teacher and Friend made him desert the falling King in his disappointed ambition, and finally betray Him.

"I charge you, my brothers," continued the dean, with a passion that shook his audience, "that you beware of self-deception. You may deceive others-yea, those who love you most dearly and live with you most intimately, who sit by your hearth and break bread at your table, through long, long years you may deceive them; and you may deceive yourselves--you may devote all to God, and yet keep back one darling sin, one cherished iniquity, that is poisoning the very springs of your being, like the young man who made the great refusal, like Ananias and Sapphira; but remember, you can not deceive God!"-here the preacher paused and choked back a rising sob-"all is open in his sight"—here the dean trembled, and his voice took a tone of heart-broken anguish-"There, my brothers, up there is no shuffling."

There was silence for some moments in the vast building, broken only by the deep or quick breathing of the hushed, attentive multitude, and the great secret of the dean's power flashed swiftly upon Everard's mind. It was the fact that the thoughts he was uttering were not his own; that he was possessed and carried away by some irresistible power, which forced him to speak what was perhaps pain and grief to him, what was utterly beyond his will. A strange power, truly, which made Ezekiel pronounce his own dire mischance, and predict the taking away the desire of his eyes for which he dared not mourn; which made Balaam bless when he tried to curse; and caused Isaiah to foretell in torrents of fiery eloquence things he desired in vain to look into-a great and awful gift when given in even the smallest measure, a gift called in olden times prophecy, in these genius.

A deep awe and compassion fell upon Everard as he looked upon the agitated and inspired orator, whose soul was so deeply stained with guilt, and he thought of the disobedient prophet and of other sinful men, singled out, in spite of their frailty, for the supreme honor of being the instruments of the Divine Will.

"Watch against secret sin," continued the preacher, in a low and earnest but distinct and audible voice. "Pray for broken hearts, failure, misery, anything but the gratified ambition, the fulfilled heart's desire which makes it impossible for you to renounce all and follow Christ." Then he spoke of the remorse of Judas and his miserable end; said that even he would have found instant forgiveness had he sought or desired it. But he probably did not think it would be given, since his own love was not large enough for such a forgiveness, and he thus shrank from the only possible healing for him. "My brothers," he said, in a voice which touched the very core of Everard's heart, "the man we think most meanly of is the man we have wronged."

He pointed out the difference between repentance and remorse; drew a vivid picture of the latter, which he said was the " sorrow of sorrows and the worst torture of hell.” He said that nothing earthly could soothe that pain-not all the riches of the world; not the esteem of men; not the highest earthly renown, or the enjoyment of beauty, health, youth; not all the pleasures of sense or intellect; not the sweetest and purest treasures of human affection; and the voice in which he said this was so exquisitely, so despairingly sad, that a wave of intensest pity rushed over Everard's soul,