sunshine that was gilding the Malbourne belfry, and shining on the honest faces of those who were bidding Everard welcome after his long exile, and offering him the simple homage of their belief in his innocence.

"How are the mighty fallen! the beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places!" mourned the bishop, silently, in the words of David over his fallen foe and friend-words which echoed through the hearts of the other clergy, as they escorted their dean for the last time from the sanctuary.

CHAPTER X.

STILL unconscious of the tragedy that was being enacted to its close in Belminster Cathedral that sunny summer aftenoon, the little family circle at Malbourne finished the quiet and holy day as they had begun it, and, retiring early to rest, slept such calm and refreshing slumbers as visit the gentle and the good.

Lilian's last thought on sleeping and first on waking was for Cyril, and how she might help to heal his sorely stricken soul, while the dreadful certainty which had followed on her long suspense and doubt on the subject of his guilt, though it filled her with deep sorrow, yet brought the calm which never fails to accompany certainty, however terrible.

She was very quiet at breakfast next morning, and Mr. Maitland, observing this, attributed it to the reaction following on the excitement of the last few days, and was more cheery and chatty than usual to make up for her defection.

Mark Antony, like other invalids, was always very shaky of a morning, and declined this day to rise for his breakfast; so a saucer of milk was placed by his padded basket on the sunny window-sill, but remained untouched.

The creature looked up in response to the caressing hand and voice of his mistress, and purred faintly, but turned away his head from the proffered milk; and, after coaxing him, and offering him everything she could think of, Lilian was about to leave her pet to rest and recover strength in the sunshine, when her retreating figure

was stayed by a faint mew, and, turning, she saw the poor little thing staggering from its bed and trying to follow her.

She ran back in time to catch the little body as it tottered and fell, and, with a loving glance and one soft attempt at a purr, lay limp and lifeless in her hands.

"Oh, Henry!" she cried, the hot tears raining from her eyes, "my pretty Mark!"

"I could have better spared a better cat!" said Mr. Maitland. "No cat ever had a pleasanter life, or an easier death," said Everard, stroking the inanimate fur. "I will bury him for you, Lilian. Let us choose a pretty spot at once.”

And they went into the garden, Everard procuring a spade and setting to work with a practised ease that reminded Lilian of his long years of hard labor, on the flower-border beneath the window, on the sill of which the deceased had spent so many sunny hours in peaceful meditation upon the follies of mankind and the wisdom of the feline race.

The grave had been properly dug, and Everard laid the cat in it, and having covered him with a verdant shroud, reminded Lilian that mourners always turned from the grave before the painful ceremony of shoveling in the earth was performed; and Lilian was obeying this suggestion, when she discovered the hitherto unnoticed presence of a messenger, who handed her a telegram.

She took it without suspicion, and delayed opening it until she had spoken a kindly word to the messenger, and directed the gardener to take him to the kitchen for rest and refreshment.

"If he had not caused me such bitter pain," she said, turning to Henry, and referring to the cat, while she broke open the envelope, "I should not have loved him half so much."

"Dear old Mark! We shall not look upon his like again. He did indeed give the world assurance of a cat."

He was not looking at Lilian, but into the grave, and was startled by a low cry of intense agony, and, looking up, saw her stagger with blanched face against the mullion of the window, where the roses bloomed round her head.

"My poor, poor boy!" she cried gaspingly.

Everard dropped the spade and came to her assistance, and she gave the paper with the terrible tidings into his hand.

"The dean died yesterday afternoon in the cathedral," was the brief, stern announcement.

"My father, oh, my father! how shall we shield him?" cried Lilian, recovering her feet, but trembling all over. "I always open his telegrams to spare him."

Everard said nothing, but crushed the paper fiercely in his pocket, while from the force of old habit he took his spade again and completed his task, no longer careful to spare Lilian's feelings, but stamping the earth resolutely down, and planting the displaced flowers upon it. Then he threw the spade aside with a deep groan.

"If he could but have spoken to me once, only once!" he said. "He got your letter, dear," said Lilian, in her usual tones, though her white lips quivered, and she still shook all over; "there is comfort in that."

66 'Yes, he must have got it. He could not have been too ill to read it. 'In the cathedral.' Oh, Lilian, he might have died that night! There was probably some heart disease. What did he think of his seizures?

"Mere nervous excitement. He did not consider himself ill. He had advice. Oh, Henry, my father!

"It will be a blow."

"It will kill him! He is feebler than you think. How can he bear this?"

"Dearest," said Everard, with infinite tenderness, "it is but death, remember. He might have heard worse tidings."

"My poor Cyril!-yes. If we could only bear the consequences of our misdeeds alone, each in his own person, how much less sorrowful life would be!"

"And how much less joyous, Lilian! Ah, my dear, this must be faced, and we must take what comfort we can!"

Then they took counsel together, and decided upon assuming that the dean was very ill, and that they were summoned to him at once. They could then accustom Mr. Maitland's mind gradually to the loss, and extinguish hope by degrees until they arrived at Belminster, when it would no longer be possible to cherish any doubt.

Everard took upon himself the piteous task of breaking the news, while Lilian made hurried preparations for their departure. He went with a beating heart to the study door, and knocked, and then it came like lightning across him that he had so gone to that room eighteen years ago, to receive, and not to give, ill tidings.

When the gentle priest lifted his white head with a pleasant

smile from the book over which he was bending, he could not but think of the awful look with which he had greeted him on his last entrance, nor could he quite forget the bitter injustice done to him then for Cyril's sake. It seemed a terrible retribution for the guileless man, whose only fault was too great a pride in his gifted son, Everard felt as if his heart would break. He could not speak, but sat down and burst into tears, the only tears shed for Cyril in his home. The fact that he, and no other, had to deal the aged father this cruel blow, on the very spot where so cruel a blow had been dealt him through that dead man's fault, seemed an awful coincidence.

Mr. Maitland's face changed; he was in a mood to anticipate calamity, but he took it very gently.

"Is it Lilian?" he asked, in a faint voice.

Everard shook his head.

"Not, oh, not Cyril!" faltered the old man, with a piteous accent, which showed where his heart was most vulnerable.

"He is ill, sir," returned Everard; "seriously ill."

Then he told him of the arrangements they had made for going at once to Belminster, and offered what assistance was needed.

Mr. Maitland said nothing, but rose to do as he was bid, with a touching acquiescence, but very feeble movements. He seemed to age ten years at least before Everard's pitying gaze, and was apparently unequal to the task of doing anything in preparation for his absence from his duties.

They drove into Oldport just in time to catch the train, and Everard and Lilian trembled for the poor father as they passed the flaring posters which announced the contents of the daily papers, and read in great capitals, "Sudden Death of the Dean of Belminster."

But Mr. Maitland did not appear to see them; he was bewildered and preoccupied in his manner, and asked only one question, "Did Cyril himself send for him?" and, appearing crushed by the negative answer, made no further observation upon passing events. He talked much in a wandering way of by-gone days, and related old forgotten events of Cyril's childhood, surprising Lilian by vivid reminiscences that were dim or quite faded in her memory, and laughing gently from time to time at the child's quaint sayings and little drolleries of long ago.

"They were twins," he said, addressing Lilian, as if she were a stranger, "A boy and a girl-such a pretty pair, and so good and

clever! Exactly alike, and so fond of each other-so fond of each other! Poor dears!" he added, shaking his white head sorrowfully, "drowned before their father's eyes-before his very eyes."

"Oh, Henry!" murmured Lilian, in a choked voice, "what shall we do? He wanders; he confuses us with Cyril's twins."

"Do not excite him; it is only temporary," Henry whispered back.

"Always a good son-a good son!" continued the stricken father, not observing their comments; "my son, the Dean of Belminster. Do you know," he added, with a pleasant smile, "he has been offered the Bishopric of Warham?"

"Yes, dear father," replied Lilian, soothingly; "but he is very, very ill."

"Ill?" he returned, with a troubled look: “not Cyril? He did everything well. A gifted youth. Little Lilian was so like him." "Dear father," said Lilian, when the last station before Belminster was passed, "Cyril can never recover."

"Is that true, Henry?" he asked, turning sharply to Everard. "It is too true, sir,” he replied gently. "Try to be calm; we shall be at Belminster in five minutes."

The old man looked about him in a hopeless, bewildered manner, and tried to speak, but his trembling lips refused utterance. Lilian caressed him, and spoke soothingly to him, as if to some frightened child. "Cyril is gone to his rest, dear," she said at last, her voice breaking as she spoke.

"Is he-dead?" he asked, with great difficulty; and Lilian replied in the affirmative, and he smiled a gentle smile that went to their very hearts, and said nothing more.

They drove through the city and into the close, in the sunny, slumbrous noon, past the red-brick houses, looking blank in the sunshine, with their white blinds darkening the windows; beneath the great leafy elms, over which some rooks were sailing; past the hoary fragment of cloister, along which two clergymen were pacing, and talking with bated breath of yesterday's tragedy; beneath the cool shadow of the great gray minster, whose vaulted roof and long aisles had scarcely ceased to thrill with the passionate anguish of Cyril's breaking heart, and round whose lofty pinnacles swallows were sweeping in the warm, blue air; and drew up before the pointed arches of the silent Deanery, the door of which opened noiselessly and discovered a weeping figure ready to receive them.