est affections of his friends, but also the love of all those with whom he came in contact.

It seemed to him that there must be some deep and enduring virtue in a man who wins such love and devotion; it appeared incredible that the affections of honest hearts should be wasted on what is utterly worthless.

He reflected how he could best serve the dead. He saw that he had been wrong in aiding him to conceal his past-that nothing but truth can serve any human being; and it seemed to him that he might fulfill those duties he had left undone, and carry on those that death had interrupted. He thought especially of Alma's neglected child.

He could not rid himself of the strong feeling we have in the presence of the dead, that the spirit is hovering about its forsaken shrine, and is conscious of the thoughts we cherish, and it seemed to him that the dead lips smiled approval of his resolution. He mused upon the unfinished letter found upon Cyril's writing-table, and dated on the day of his death-"Dear Henry, your noble letter has broken my heart," and he felt, as in his ardent youth, that he could go through fire and water for this man.

He thought of old that Cyril's character contained the ewig weibliche element Goethe prized. He was wrong; that saving ingredient was in his own manlier nature, not in the weak Cyril's.

Through all his long reverie he did not stir from his statue-like calm; nothing in the still chamber marred the quiet which is the homage we pay to that silent terror, death. His very breath seemed stilled in the intensity of his abstraction; he did not see the shifting of the sunbeams, the gradual drooping of the flowers, the fall of petal after petal, nor did he hear the recurrent chime-music, though years afterward these things recalled the solemn thoughts of that long vigil.

The air was cool and refreshing, and the slanting sunbeams were dyeing the minster towers a clear wine-like crimson, when his long reverie was broken at last by the entrance of Cyril's orphan children.

Then he rose, greeted them affectionately, and, bidding them look on him as their father now, he left them alone with their dead.

CHAPTER XI.

EVERARD closed the door softly behind him, and went into the hall with a solemn radiance on his face, and was about to ascend the staircase to inquire into Mr. Maitland's condition, when he was met by a gentleman with a benign and intellectual face and a dignified bearing.

"Dr. Everard," he said, in a rich, deep voice, "allow me the honor of shaking hands with a man whose noble conduct has perhaps saved a human soul. I am the Bishop of Belminster," he added, "the late dean's executor and friend, and am intrusted by him with the duty of clearing your character from the imputations which have lain so long upon it."

And, leading him into the study, where the evidences of the dean's daily occupations and the empty chair by the table, on which lay his unfinished tasks, spoke more pathetically of his death than his quiet form itself, the bishop acquainted him briefly with all that the reader knows already concerning the will, the written confession, and Alma's death-bed depositions. Having done this, he led him to the drawing-room, which was flushed through its closed blinds with the glory of the summer sunset, and introduced him to his brothers, Keppel and George, and his sister Mrs. Whiteford, who were waiting to receive him, Keppel having brought the children from Portsmouth.

They greeted him with cordial affection, and many expressions of regret and contrition for their long injustice; and Keppel introduced him to Lady Everard, to whom he had been married after his brother's disgrace.

Henry was glad, though he could not but feel the meeting extremely painful, especially under Cyril's roof. The bishop had considerately withdrawn on presenting him, and, after the first confused expressions of welcome, regret, and congratulation, the relatives scarcely knew what to say to each other until Henry at last expressed a hope that all knowledge of Cyril's share in Benjamin Lee's death might be spared his children, which all agreed, if possible, to do.

Admiral Sir Keppel and the Rev. George, though both some years older than Henry, looked younger; neither had a gray hair, and both were fine, handsome, robust men. They were much distressed

at the marks of hardship and suffering upon him, and Mrs. Whiteford wept and blamed herself greatly for allowing her husband to dissuade her from communicating with him in his trouble.

"You must pay us a long visit, Hal," said Keppel. "We have a nice place near Ryde, and the children will take you about in their boat, and make you young again."

แ

"And you must certainly come to us," added George; "my wife told me to bring you home this very night. Our place is very healthily situated on the hill yonder, just outside Belminster."

"And to us," added Mrs. Whiteford. "My husband wants you to go for a cruise with us. That will recruit your health, if anything will."

"Ah, Henry, I can sympathize with you!" said George, with deep solemnity. “I know what a prison is like. I had a twelvemonth, the effects of which I am still feeling," he added, with a sigh of intense enjoyment.

"You had a twelvemonth?" inquired Henry, scauning his solemn clerical brother from head to foot with astonishment.

"You may well look surprised," said Keppel, "and wonder what parsons have to do with the inside of a gaol."

"I have experienced the honor of persecution, Henry," explained George, with deep satisfaction. "The rigors of my captivity were greatly softened by the sympathy of faithful people."

"Rigors indeed!" growled Keppel. "The beggar was in clover, and almost on his parole. But, as I tell George, he would have got double the time, and been cashiered into the bargain, if I had been in command."

"But, my dear George," asked Henry, "what were you persecuted for? and how could you be imprisoned? I thought the fires of Smithfield, the memory of which you used to be so fond of recalling, were extinguished centuries ago."

"You are mistaken, Henry," returned George, in his gruffest bass. "In the seclusion of your dungeon you have been spared even the knowledge of the awful evils we in the world have been called upon to face. Never was the enemy of mankind more active than in these latter evil days. The Catholic Church is beleaguered by all the powers of darkness, and those of her priests who dare to be faithful are hurled into dungeons."

"The Catholic Church? Why, I thought you were one of the strongest pillars of Protestantism, and renounced the scarlet woman

and all her works? I am glad to see that persecution and dungeons have not permanently damaged you."

Keppel remembered the solemn tenant of the near chamber in time to stifle a burst of laughter, while George looked embarrassed, and stammered a good deal.

"Ah, Henry!" he replied, "you are thinking of twenty years ago, when I was in the depths; I have advanced greatly since then." "You don't mean to say you are a Ritualist?" asked Henry, eying his brother's sacerdotal appearance with affectionate amuse

ment.

"My dear Henry," said Keppel, interrupting George's disclaimer of this term, "that fellow is the Ritualist, the ringleader of them all. What the service would come to if mutineers were let down as lightly as he is, Heaven only knows. Persecution indeed!"

Henry smiled. "How this would have amused Cyril!" he said involuntarily. “No, George; I am not mocking," he added, in response to a pained look on his brother's face; for, as he learnt subsequently, Cyril had been wont to tease his reverend brother a good deal on the extreme to which he had veered from his ultraProtestant opinions. "If you think it your duty to differ from your bishop, every one must honor you for going to prison about it. But your tenets used to be so very extreme in the other direction. Tell me about your children."

Every effort was made to keep Cyril's funeral as private as possible, but in vain. Lilian, who was co-executor with the bishop, had so much to occupy her in her father's illness, and her great anxiety to spare Marion and Everard the slightest suspicion of the tragedy which killed their father, that she left the funeral arrangements to the bishop, only stipulating for extreme privacy. By some perverse destiny, the bishop misunderstood her wishes and those of the family, which were that Cyril's remains should be taken to Malbourne, and at the last moment it was discovered that all was arranged for an interment in the cathedral burial-ground.

Thither, therefore, the dean's remains were borne by the hands of those who had loved him and volunteered for this service, and the mourners, on following their dead into the cathedral, were dismayed to find it thronged from end to end by people, who wore mourning, and many of whom bore wreaths for the dead. They had feared a curious crowd, but the majority of this crowd were

animated by something better than curiosity. Those who accepted the dean's terrible revelations came to honor his penitence, and respect his fallen estate; many clergy came in the spirit which moved his brother seer to do honor to the remains of the disobedient prophet.

But the public at large utterly refused all credence to his guilt, not only at the time of the funeral, but even after Alma's confession had been made public. Not a woman in Belminster, and not many men, held the golden-mouthed preacher and large-hearted philanthropist to be guilty. The question was largely discussed in the press, as well as in private circles; instances of similar selfaccusations of half-forgotten crimes by those whose minds had been consumed by long-brooding grief and strained by overwork were cited; and it was the popular opinion that the dean died in the excitement of a terrible hallucination.

Flags were floated half-mast high, shops were shut, and knells were tolled in the city churches and in some villages on the day of the funeral. Clergymen came from rural parishes to pay the last homage to their great brother; the Nonconformist ministers, with whom he had always maintained such pleasant relations, flocked to the grave of the gifted and gracious Churchman; societies and charitable bodies in which he had taken interest sent deputations. Most of those who saw him die were there. In the midst of this vast concourse, beneath the majestic arches of the lofty cathedral, amid the dirge-like thunders of the organ and the mournful chanting of the full choir, there was a pathetic simplicity in the plain coffin, followed by its half-dozen mourners, foremost among whom showed the silvered head and bowed form of the friend so deeply wronged by the dead. Cyril's weeping daughter was on Everard's arm, and Lilian led his blind son by the hand; Ingram Swaynestone and George and Keppel Everard closed the list of kinsfolk. But the uninvited mourners were innumerable, and the tears they shed were many, and not the least imposing part of the grand and solemn Burial Service was the immense volume of human voices, which rose like the sound of many waters upon the mournful strains of the funeral hymn.

At the close of the ceremony, Henry's attention was attracted to a young man who had pressed gradually nearer and nearer to the grave, into which he cast a wreath, and who manifested great emotion, which he nevertheless tried hard to restrain. There was some