He had just laid hold of his oars, when out of the porch rushed a roar of harmony that seemed to seize his boat and blow it away upon its mission like a feather—for in the delight of the music the curate never felt the arms that urged it swiftly along. After him it came pursuing, and wafted him mightily on. Over the brown waters it went rolling, a grand billow of innumerable involving and involved waves. He thought of the spirit of God that moved on the face of the primeval waters, and out of a chaos wrought a cosmos. "Would," he said to himself, "that ever from the church door went forth such a spirit of harmony and healing of peace and life! But the church's foes are they of her own household, who with the axes and hammers of pride and exclusiveness and vulgar priestliness, break the carved work of her numberless chapels, yea, build doorless screens from floor to roof, dividing nave and choir and chancel and transepts and aisles into sections numberless, and, with the evil dust they raise, darken for ages the windows of her clerestory!"

The curate was thinking of no party, but of individual spirit. Of the priestliness I have encountered, I can not determine whether the worse belonged to the Church of England or a certain body of Dissenters.



CHAPTER XLIII.

THE GATE-LODGE.

Mr Bevis had his horses put to, then taken away again, and an old hunter saddled. But half-way from home he came to a burst bridge, and had to return, much to the relief of his wife, who, when she had him in the house again, could enjoy the rain, she said: it was so cosey and comfortable to feel you could not go out, or any body call. I presume she therein seemed to take a bond of fate, and doubly assure the every-day dullness of her existence. Well, she was a good creature, and doubtless a corner would be found for her up above, where a little more work would probably be required of her.

Polwarth and his niece Ruth rose late, for neither had slept well. When they had breakfasted, they read together from the Bible: first the uncle read the passage he had last got light upon—he was always getting light upon passages, and then the niece the passage she had last been gladdened by; after which they sat and chatted a long time by the kitchen fire.

"I am afraid your asthma was bad last night, uncle dear," said Ruth. "I heard your breathing every time I woke."

"It was, rather," answered the little man, "but I took my revenge, and had a good crow over it."

"I know what you mean, uncle: do let me hear the crow."

He rose, and slowly climbing the stair to his chamber, returned with a half sheet of paper in his hand, resumed his seat, and read the following lines, which he had written in pencil when the light came:

Satan, avaunt! Nay, take thine hour; Thou canst not daunt, Thou hast no power; Be welcome to thy nest, Though it be in my breast.

Burrow amain; Dig like a mole; Fill every vein With half-burned coal; Puff the keen dust about, And all to choke me out.

Fill music's ways With creaking cries, That no loud praise May climb the skies; And on my laboring chest Lay mountains of unrest.

My slumber steep In dreams of haste, That only sleep, No rest I taste— With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers on the throat.

Satan, thy might I do defy; Live core of night, I patient lie: A wind comes up the gray Will blow thee clean away.

Christ's angel, Death, All radiant white, With one cold breath Will scare thee quite, And give my lungs an air As fresh as answered prayer.

So, Satan, do Thy worst with me, Until the True Shall set me free, And end what He began, By making me a man.

"It is not much of poetry, Ruth!" he said, raising his eyes from the paper; "—no song of thrush or blackbird! I am ashamed that I called it a cock-crow—for that is one of the finest things in the world—a clarion defiance to darkness and sin—far too good a name for my poor jingle—except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-cock-crow—from out a very wheezy chest!"

"'My strength is made perfect in weakness,'" said Ruth solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself.

"I think I like the older reading better—that is, without the My," said Polwarth: "'Strength is made perfect in weakness.' Somehow—I can not explain the feeling—to hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth of the human God, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me close to the very heart of the universe. Strength—strength itself—all over—is made perfect in weakness;—a law of being, you see, Ruth! not a law of Christian growth only, but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. The Master's own strength was thus perfected, and so must be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength must be his!—how patient in endurance—how gentle in exercise—how mighty in devotion—how fine in its issues,-perfected by such suffering! Ah, my child, you suffer sorely sometimes—I know it well! but shall we not let patience have her perfect work, that we may—one day, Ruth, one day, my child—be perfect and entire, wanting nothing?"

Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her stool on her knees. Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said:

"O Father of life, we praise Thee that one day Thou wilt take Thy poor crooked creatures, and give them bodies like Christ's, perfect as His, and full of Thy light. Help us to grow faster—as fast as Thou canst help us to grow. Help us to keep our eyes on the opening of Thy hand, that we may know the manna when it comes. O Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest with us. Thou hast made us love Thee, and hope in Thee, and in Thy love we will be brave and endure. All in good time, O Lord. Amen."

While they thus prayed, kneeling on the stone floor of the little kitchen, dark under the universal canopy of cloud, the rain went on clashing and murmuring all around, rushing from the eaves, and exploding with sharp hisses in the fire, and in the mingled noise they had neither heard a low tap, several times repeated, nor the soft opening of the door that followed. When they rose from their knees, it was therefore with astonishment they saw a woman standing motionless in the doorway, without cloak or bonnet, her dank garments clinging to her form and dripping with rain.

When Juliet woke that morning, she cared little that the sky was dull and the earth dark. A selfish sorrow, a selfish love even, makes us stupid, and Juliet had been growing more and more stupid. Many people, it seems to me, through sorrow endured perforce and without a gracious submission, slowly sink in the scale of existence. Such are some of those middle-aged women, who might be the very strength of social well-being, but have no aspiration, and hope only downward—after rich husbands for their daughters, it may be—a new bonnet or an old coronet—the devil knows what.

Bad as the weather had been the day before, Dorothy had yet contrived to visit her, and see that she was provided with every necessary; and Juliet never doubted she would come that day also. She thought of Dorothy's ministrations as we so often do of God's—as of things that come of themselves, for which there is no occasion to be thankful.

When she had finished the other little house-work required for her comfort, a labor in which she found some little respite from the gnawings of memory and the blankness of anticipation, she ended by making up a good fire, though without a thought of Dorothy's being wet when she arrived, and sitting down by the window, stared out at the pools, spreading wider and wider on the gravel walks beneath her. She sat till she grew chilly, then rose and dropped into an easy chair by the fire, and fell fast asleep.

She slept a long time, and woke in a terror, seeming to have waked herself with a cry. The fire was out, and the hearth cold. She shivered and drew her shawl about her. Then suddenly she remembered the frightful dream she had had.

She dreamed that she had just fled from her husband and gained the park, when, the moment she entered it, something seized her from behind, and bore her swiftly, as in the arms of a man—only she seemed to hear the rush of wings behind her—the way she had been going. She struggled in terror, but in vain; the power bore her swiftly on, and she knew whither. Her very being recoiled from the horrible depth of the motionless pool, in which, as she now seemed to know, lived one of the loathsome creatures of the semi-chaotic era of the world, which had survived its kind as well as its coevals, and was ages older than the human race. The pool appeared—but not as she had known it, for it boiled and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it was moved to meet and receive her! Coil upon coil it lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then stretched out a long, writhing, shivering neck to take her from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed in terror.

With the memory of the dream not a little of its horror returned; she rose to shake it off, and went to the window. What did she see there? The fearsome pool had entered the garden, had come half-way to the house, and was plainly rising every moment. More or less the pool had haunted her ever since she came; she had seldom dared go nearer it than half-way down the garden. But for the dulling influence of her misery, it would have been an unendurable horror to her, now it was coming to fetch her as she had seen it in her warning dream! Her brain reeled; for a moment she gazed paralyzed with horror, then turned from the window, and, with almost the conviction that the fiend of her vision was pursuing her, fled from the house, and across the park, through the sheets of rain, to the gate-lodge, nor stopped until, all unaware of having once thought of him in her terror, she stood at the door of Polwarth's cottage.

Ruth was darting toward her with outstretched hands, when her uncle stopped her.

"Ruth, my child," he said, "run and light a fire in the parlor. I will welcome our visitor."

She turned instantly, and left the room. Then Polwarth went up to Juliet, who stood trembling, unable to utter a word, and said, with perfect old-fashioned courtesy, "You are heartily welcome, ma'am. I sent Ruth away that I might first assure you that you are as safe with her as with me. Sit here a moment, ma'am. You are so wet, I dare not place you nearer to the fire.—Ruth!"

She came instantly.

"Ruth," he repeated, "this lady is Mrs. Faber. She is come to visit us for a while. Nobody must know of it.—You need not be at all uneasy, Mrs. Faber. Not a soul will come near us to-day. But I will lock the door, to secure time, if any one should.—You will get Mrs. Faber's room ready at once, Ruth. I will come and help you. But a spoonful of brandy in hot water first, please.—Let me move your chair a little, ma'am—out of the draught."

Juliet in silence did every thing she was told, received the prescribed antidote from Ruth, and was left alone in the kitchen.

But the moment she was freed from one dread, she was seized by another; suspicion took the place of terror; and as soon as she heard the toiling of the goblins up the creaking staircase, she crept to the foot of it after them, and with no more compunction than a princess in a fairy-tale, set herself to listen. It was not difficult, for the little inclosed staircase carried every word to the bottom of it.

"I thought she wasn't dead!" she heard Ruth exclaim joyfully; and the words and tone set her wondering.

"I saw you did not seem greatly astonished at the sight of her; but what made you think such an unlikely thing?" rejoined her uncle.

"I saw you did not believe she was dead. That was enough for me."

"You are a witch, Ruth! I never said a word one way or the other."

"Which showed that you were thinking, and made me think. You had something in your mind which you did not choose to tell me yet."

"Ah, child!" rejoined her uncle, in a solemn tone, "how difficult it is to hide any thing! I don't think God wants any thing hidden. The light is His region, His kingdom, His palace-home. It can only be evil, outside or in, that makes us turn from the fullest light of the universe. Truly one must be born again to enter into the kingdom!"

Juliet heard every word, heard and was bewildered. The place in which she had sought refuge was plainly little better than a kobold-cave, yet merely from listening to the talk of the kobolds without half understanding it, she had begun already to feel a sense of safety stealing over her, such as she had never been for an instant aware of in the Old House, even with Dorothy beside her.

They went on talking, and she went on listening. They were so much her inferiors there could be no impropriety in doing so!

"The poor lady," she heard the man-goblin say, "has had some difference with her husband; but whether she wants to hide from him or from the whole world or from both, she only can tell. Our business is to take care of her, and do for her what God may lay to our hand. What she desires to hide, is sacred to us. We have no secrets of our own, Ruth, and have the more room for those of other people who are unhappy enough to have any. Let God reveal what He pleases: there are many who have no right to know what they most desire to know. She needs nursing, poor thing! We will pray to God for her."

"But how shall we make her comfortable in such a poor little house?" returned Ruth. "It is the dearest place in the world to me—but how will she feel in it?"

"We will keep her warm and clean," answered her uncle, "and that is all an angel would require."

"An angel!—yes," answered Ruth: "for angels don't eat; or, at least, if they do, for I doubt if you will grant that they don't, I am certain that they are not so hard to please as some people down here. The poor, dear lady is delicate—you know she has always been—and I am not much of a cook."

"You are a very good cook, my dear. Perhaps you do not know a great many dishes, but you are a dainty cook of those you do know. Few people can have more need than we to be careful what they eat,—we have got such a pair of troublesome cranky little bodies; and if you can suit them, I feel sure you will be able to suit any invalid that is not fastidious by nature rather than necessity."

"I will do my best," said Ruth cheerily, comforted by her uncle's confidence. "The worst is that, for her own sake, I must not get a girl to help me."

"The lady will help you with her own room," said Polwarth. "I have a shrewd notion that it is only the fine ladies, those that are so little of ladies that they make so much of being ladies, who mind doing things with their own hands. Now you must go and make her some tea, while she gets in bed. She is sure to like tea best."

Juliet retreated noiselessly, and when the woman-gnome entered the kitchen, there sat the disconsolate lady where she had left her, still like the outcast princess of a fairy-tale: she had walked in at the door, and they had immediately begun to arrange for her stay, and the strangest thing to Juliet was that she hardly felt it strange. It was only as if she had come a day sooner than she was expected—which indeed was very much the case, for Polwarth had been looking forward to the possibility, and latterly to the likelihood of her becoming their guest.

"Your room is ready now," said Ruth, approaching her timidly, and looking up at her with her woman's childlike face on the body of a child. "Will you come?"

Juliet rose and followed her to the garret-room with the dormer window, in which Ruth slept.

"Will you please get into bed as fast as you can," she said, "and when you knock on the floor I will come and take away your clothes and get them dried. Please to wrap this new blanket round you, lest the cold sheets should give you a chill. They are well aired, though. I will bring you a hot bottle, and some tea. Dinner will be ready soon."

So saying she left the chamber softly. The creak of the door as she closed it, and the white curtains of the bed and window, reminded Juliet of a certain room she once occupied at the house of an old nurse, where she had been happier than ever since in all her life, until her brief bliss with Faber: she burst into tears, and weeping undressed and got into bed. There the dryness and the warmth and the sense of safety soothed her speedily; and with the comfort crept in the happy thought that here she lay on the very edge of the high road to Glaston, and that nothing could be more probable than that she would soon see her husband ride past. With that one hope she could sit at a window watching for centuries! "O Paul! Paul! my Paul!" she moaned. "If I could but be made clean again for you! I would willingly be burned at the stake, if the fire would only make me clean, for the chance of seeing you again in the other world!" But as the comfort into her brain, so the peace of her new surroundings stole into her heart. The fancy grew upon her that she was in a fairy-tale, in which she must take every thing as it came, for she could not alter the text. Fear vanished; neither staring eyes nor creeping pool could find her in the guardianship of the benevolent goblins. She fell fast asleep; and the large, clear, gray eyes of the little woman gnome came and looked at her as she slept, and their gaze did not rouse her. Softly she went, and came again; but, although dinner was then ready, Ruth knew better than to wake her. She knew that sleep is the chief nourisher in life's feast, and would not withdraw the sacred dish. Her uncle said sleep was God's contrivance for giving man the help he could not get into him while he was awake. So the loving gnomes had their dinner together, putting aside the best portions of it against the waking of the beautiful lady lying fast asleep above.



CHAPTER XLIV.

THE CORNER OF THE BUTCHER'S SHOP.

All that same Sunday morning, the minister and Dorothy had of course plenty of work to their hand, for their more immediate neighbors were all of the poor. Their own house, although situated on the very bank of the river, was in no worse plight than most of the houses in the town, for it stood upon an artificial elevation; and before long, while it had its lower parts full of water like the rest, its upper rooms were filled with people from the lanes around. But Mr. Drake's heart was in the Pottery, for he was anxious as to the sufficiency of his measures. Many of the neighbors, driven from their homes, had betaken themselves to his inclosure, and when he went, he found the salmon-fishers still carrying families thither. He set out at once to get what bread he could from the baker's, a quantity of meat from the butcher, cheese, coffee, and tins of biscuits and preserved meat from the grocers: all within his bounds were either his own people or his guests, and he must do what he could to feed them. For the first time he felt rich, and heartily glad and grateful that he was. He could please God, his neighbor, and himself all at once, getting no end of good out of the slave of which the unrighteous make a god.

He took Dorothy with him, for he would have felt helpless on such an expedition without her judgment; and, as Lisbeth's hands were more than full, they agreed it was better to take Amanda. Dorothy was far from comfortable at having to leave Juliet alone all day, but the possibility of her being compelled to omit her customary visit had been contemplated between them, and she could not fail to understand it on this the first occasion. Anyhow, better could not be, for the duty at home was far the more pressing. That day she showed an energy which astonished even her father. Nor did she fail of her reward. She received insights into humanity which grew to real knowledge. I was going to say that, next to an insight into the heart of God, an insight into the heart of a human being is the most precious of things; but when I think of it—what is the latter but the former? I will say this at least, that no one reads the human heart well, to whom the reading reveals nothing of the heart of the Father. The wire-gauze of sobering trouble over the flaming flower of humanity, enabled Dorothy to see right down into its fire-heart, and distinguish there the loveliest hues and shades. Where the struggle for own life is in abeyance, and the struggle for other life active, there the heart that God thought out and means to perfect, the pure love-heart of His humans, reveals itself truly, and is gracious to behold. For then the will of the individual sides divinely with his divine impulse, and his heart is unified in good. When the will of the man sides perfectly with the holy impulses in him, then all is well; for then his mind is one with the mind of his Maker; God and man are one.

Amanda shrieked with delight when she was carried to the boat, and went on shrieking as she floated over flower-beds and box-borders, caught now and then in bushes and overhanging branches. But the great fierce current, ridging the middle of the brown lake as it followed the tide out to the ocean, frightened her a little. The features of the flat country were all but obliterated; trees only and houses and corn-stacks stood out of the water, while in the direction of the sea where were only meadows, all indication of land had vanished; one wide, brown level was everywhere, with a great rushing serpent of water in the middle of it. Amanda clapped her little hands in ecstasy. Never was there such a child for exuberance of joy! her aunt thought. Or, if there were others as glad, where were any who let the light of their gladness so shine before men, invading, conquering them as she did with the rush of her joy! Dorothy held fast to the skirt of her frock, fearing every instant the explosive creature would jump overboard in elemental sympathy. But, poled carefully along by Mr. Drake, they reached in safety a certain old shed, and getting in at the door of the loft where a cow-keeper stored his hay and straw, through that descended into the heart of the Pottery, which its owner was delighted to find—not indeed dry under foot with such a rain falling, but free from lateral invasion.

His satisfaction, however, was of short duration. Dorothy went into one of the nearer dwellings, and he was crossing an open space with Amanda, to get help from a certain cottage in unloading the boat and distributing its cargo, when he caught sight of a bubbling pool in the middle of it. Alas! it was from a drain, whose covering had burst with the pressure from within. He shouted for help. Out hurried men, women and children on all sides. For a few moments he was entirely occupied in giving orders, and let Amanda's hand go: every body knew her, and there seemed no worse mischief within reach for her than dabbling in the pools, to which she was still devoted.

Two or three spades were soon plying busily, to make the breach a little wider, while men ran to bring clay and stones from one of the condemned cottages. Suddenly arose a great cry, and the crowd scattered in all directions. The wall of defense at the corner of the butcher's shop had given away, and a torrent was galloping across the Pottery, straight for the spot where the water was rising from the drain. Amanda, gazing in wonder at the fight of the people about her, stood right in its course, but took no heed of it, or never saw it coming. It caught her, swept her away, and tumbled with her, foaming and roaring, into the deep foundation of which I have spoken. Her father had just missed her, and was looking a little anxiously round, when a shriek of horror and fear burst from the people, and they rushed to the hole. Without a word spoken he knew Amanda was in it. He darted through them, scattering men and women in all directions, but pulling off his coat as he ran.

Though getting old, he was far from feeble, and had been a strong swimmer in his youth. But he plunged heedlessly, and the torrent, still falling some little height, caught him, and carried him almost to the bottom. When he came to the top, he looked in vain for any sign of the child. The crowd stood breathless on the brink. No one had seen her, though all eyes were staring into the tumult. He dived, swam about beneath, groping in the frightful opacity, but still in vain. Then down through the water came a shout, and he shot to the surface—to see only something white vanish. But the recoil of the torrent from below caught her, and just as he was diving again, brought her up almost within arm's-length of him. He darted to her, clasped her, and gained the brink. He could not have got out, though the cavity was now brimful, but ready hands had him in safety in a moment. Fifty arms were stretched to take the child, but not even to Dorothy would he yield her. Ready to fall at every step, he blundered through the water, which now spread over the whole place, and followed by Dorothy in mute agony, was making for the shed behind which lay his boat, when one of the salmon fishers, who had brought his coble in at the gap, crossed them, and took them up. Mr. Drake dropped into the bottom of the boat, with the child pressed to his bosom. He could not speak.

"To Doctor Faber's! For the child's life!" said Dorothy, and the fisher rowed like a madman.

Faber had just come in. He undressed the child with his own hands, rubbed her dry, and did every thing to initiate respiration. For a long time all seemed useless, but he persisted beyond the utmost verge of hope. Mr. Drake and Dorothy stood in mute dismay. Neither was quite a child of God yet, and in the old man a rebellious spirit murmured: it was hard that he should have evil for good! that his endeavors for his people should be the loss of his child!

Faber was on the point of ceasing his efforts in utter despair, when he thought he felt a slight motion of the diaphragm, and renewed them eagerly. She began to breathe. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then with a smile closed them again. To the watchers heaven itself seemed to open in that smile. But Faber dropped the tiny form, started a pace backward from the bed, and stood staring aghast. The next moment he threw the blankets over the child, turned away, and almost staggered from the room. In his surgery he poured himself out a glass of brandy, swallowed it neat, sat down and held his head in his hands. An instant after, he was by the child's side again, feeling her pulse, and rubbing her limbs under the blankets.

The minister's hands had turned blue, and he had begun to shiver, but a smile of sweetest delight was on his face.

"God bless me!" cried the doctor, "you've got no coat on! and you are drenched! I never saw any thing but the child!"

"He plunged into the horrible hole after her," said Dorothy. "How wicked of me to forget him for any child under the sun! He got her out all by himself, Mr. Faber!—Come home, father dear.—I will come back and see to Amanda as soon as I have got him to bed."

"Yes, Dorothy; let us go," said the minister, and put his hand on her shoulder. His teeth chattered and his hand shook.

The doctor rang the bell violently.

"Neither of you shall leave this house to-night.—Take a hot bath to the spare bedroom, and remove the sheets," he said to the housekeeper, who had answered the summons. "My dear sir," he went on, turning again to the minister, "you must get into the blankets at once. How careless of me! The child's life will be dear at the cost of yours."

"You have brought back the soul of the child to me, Mr. Faber," said the minister, trembling, "and I can never thank you enough."

"There won't be much to thank me for, if you have to go instead.—Miss Drake, while I give your father his bath, you must go with Mrs. Roberts, and put on dry clothes. Then you will be able to nurse him."

As soon as Dorothy, whose garments Juliet had been wearing so long, was dressed in some of hers, she went to her father's room. He was already in bed, but it was long before they could get him warm. Then he grew burning hot, and all night was talking in troubled dreams. Once Dorothy heard him say, as if he had been talking to God face to face: "O my God, if I had but once seen Thee, I do not think I could ever have mistrusted Thee. But I could never be quite sure."

The morning brought lucidity. How many dawns a morning brings! His first words were "How goes it with the child?" Having heard that she had had a good night, and was almost well, he turned over, and fell fast asleep. Then Dorothy, who had been by his bed all night, resumed her own garments, and went to the door.



CHAPTER XLV.

HERE AND THERE.

The rain had ceased, and the flood was greatly diminished. It was possible, she judged, to reach the Old House, and after a hasty breakfast, she set out, leaving her father to Mrs. Roberts's care. The flood left her no choice but go by the high road to Polwarth's gate, and then she had often to wade through mud and water. The moment she saw the gatekeeper, she knew somehow by his face that Juliet was in the lodge. When she entered, she saw that already her new circumstances were working upon her for peace. The spiritual atmosphere, so entirely human, the sense that she was not and would not be alone, the strange talk which they held openly before her, the food they coaxed her to eat, the whole surrounding of thoughts and things as they should be, was operating far more potently than could be measured by her understanding of their effects, or even consciousness of their influences. She still looked down upon the dwarfs, condescended to them, had a vague feeling that she honored them by accepting their ministration—for which, one day, she would requite them handsomely. Not the less had she all the time a feeling that she was in the society of ministering spirits of God, good and safe and true. From the Old House to the cottage was from the Inferno to the Purgatorio, across whose borders faint wafts from Paradise now and then strayed wandering. Without knowing it, she had begun already to love the queer little woman, with the wretched body, the fine head, and gentle, suffering face; while the indescribable awe, into which her aversion to the kobold, with his pigeon-chest, his wheezing breath, his great head, and his big, still face, which to such eyes as the curate's seemed to be looking into both worlds at once, had passed over, bore no unimportant part in that portion of her discipline here commenced. One of the loftiest spirits of the middle earth, it was long before she had quite ceased to regard him as a power of the nether world, partly human, and at once something less and something more. Yet even already she was beginning to feel at home with them! True, the world in which they really lived was above her spiritual vision, as beyond her intellectual comprehension, yet not the less was the air around them the essential air of homeness; for the truths in which their spirits lived and breathed, were the same which lie at the root of every feeling of home-safety in the world, which make the bliss of the child in his mother's bed, the bliss of young beasts in their nests, of birds under their mother's wing. The love which inclosed her was far too great for her—as the heaven of the mother's face is beyond the understanding of the new-born child over whom she bends; but that mother's face is nevertheless the child's joy and peace. She did not yet recognize it as love, saw only the ministration; but it was what she sorely needed: she said the sort of thing suited her, and at once began to fall in with it. What it cost her entertainers, with organization as delicate as uncouth, in the mere matter of bodily labor, she had not an idea—imagined indeed that she gave them no trouble at all, because, having overheard the conversation between them upon her arrival, she did herself a part of the work required for her comfort in her own room. She never saw the poor quarters to which Ruth for her sake had banished herself—never perceived the fact that there was nothing good enough wherewith to repay them except worshipful gratitude, love, admiration, and submission—feelings she could not even have imagined possible in regard to such inferiors.

And now Dorothy had not a little to say to Juliet about her husband. In telling what had taken place, however, she had to hear many more questions than she was able to answer.

"Does he really believe me dead, Dorothy?" was one of them.

"I do not believe there is one person in Glaston who knows what he thinks," answered Dorothy. "I have not heard of his once opening his mouth on the subject. He is just as silent now as he used to be ready to talk."

"My poor Paul!" murmured Juliet, and hid her face and wept.

Indeed not a soul in Glaston or elsewhere knew a single thought he had. Certain mysterious advertisements in the county paper were imagined by some to be his and to refer to his wife. Some, as the body had never been seen, did begin to doubt whether she was dead. Some, on the other hand, hinted that her husband had himself made away with her—for, they argued, what could be easier to a doctor, and why, else, did he make no search for the body? To Dorothy this supposed fact seemed to indicate a belief that she was not dead—perhaps a hope that she would sooner betray herself if he manifested no anxiety to find her. But she said nothing of this to Juliet.

Her news of him was the more acceptable to the famished heart of the wife, that, from his great kindness to them all, and especially from the perseverance which had restored to them their little Amanda, Dorothy's heart had so warmed toward him, that she could not help speaking of him in a tone far more agreeable to Juliet than hitherto she had been able to use. His pale, worn look, and the tokens of trouble throughout his demeanor, all more evident upon nearer approach, had also wrought upon her; and she so described his care, anxiety, and tenderness over Amanda, that Juliet became jealous of the child, as she would have been of any dog she saw him caress. When all was told, and she was weary of asking questions to which there were no answers, she fell back in her chair with a sigh: alas, she was no nearer to him for the hearing of her ears! While she lived she was open to his scorn, and deserved it the more that she had seemed to die! She must die; for then at last a little love would revive in his heart, ere he died too and followed her nowhither. Only first she must leave him his child to plead for her:—she used sometimes to catch herself praying that the infant might be like her.

"Look at my jacket!" said Dorothy. It was one of Juliet's, and she hoped to make her smile.

"Did Paul see you with my clothes on?" she said angrily.

Dorothy started with the pang of hurt that shot through her. But the compassionate smile on the face of Polwarth, who had just entered, and had heard the last article of the conversation, at once set her right. For not only was he capable of immediate sympathy with emotion, but of revealing at once that he understood its cause. Ruth, who had come into the room behind him, second only to her uncle in the insight of love, followed his look by asking Dorothy if she might go to the Old House, as soon as the weather permitted, to fetch some clothes for Mrs. Faber, who had brought nothing with her but what she wore; whereupon Dorothy, partly for leisure to fight her temper, said she would go herself, and went. But when she returned, she gave the bag to Ruth at the door, and went away without seeing Juliet again. She was getting tired of her selfishness, she said to herself. Dorothy was not herself yet perfect in love—which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Faber too had been up all night—by the bedside of the little Amanda. She scarcely needed such close attendance, for she slept soundly, and was hardly at all feverish. Four or five times in the course of the night, he turned down the bed-clothes to examine her body, as if he feared some injury not hitherto apparent. Of such there was no sign.

In his youth he had occupied himself much with comparative anatomy and physiology. His predilection for these studies had greatly sharpened his observation, and he noted many things that escaped the eyes of better than ordinary observers. Amongst other kinds of things to which he kept his eyes open, he was very quick at noting instances of the strange persistency with which Nature perpetuates minute peculiarities, carrying them on from generation to generation. Occupied with Amanda, a certain imperfection in one of the curves of the outer ear attracted his attention. It is as rare to see a perfect ear as to see a perfect form, and the varieties of unfinished curves are many; but this imperfection was very peculiar. At the same time it was so slight, that not even the eye of a lover, none save that of a man of science, alive to minutest indications, would probably have seen it. The sight of it startled Faber not a little; it was the second instance of the peculiarity that had come to his knowledge. It gave him a new idea to go upon, and when the child suddenly opened her eyes, he saw another face looking at him out of hers. The idea then haunted him; and whether it was that it assimilated facts to itself, or that the signs were present, further search afforded what was to him confirmation of the initiatory suspicion.

Notwithstanding the state of feebleness in which he found Mr. Drake the next morning, he pressed him with question upon question, amounting to a thorough cross-examination concerning Amanda's history, undeterred by the fact that, whether itself merely bored, or its nature annoyed him, his patient plainly disrelished his catechising. It was a subject which, as his love to the child increased, had grown less and less agreeable to Mr. Drake: she was to him so entirely his own that he had not the least desire to find out any thing about her, to learn a single fact or hear a single conjecture to remind him that she was not in every sense as well as the best, his own daughter. He was therefore not a little annoyed at the persistency of the doctor's questioning, but, being a courteous man, and under endless obligation to him for the very child's sake as well as his own, he combated disinclination, and with success, acquainting the doctor with every point he knew concerning Amanda. Then first the doctor grew capable of giving his attention to the minister himself; whose son if he had been, he could hardly have shown him greater devotion. A whole week passed before he would allow him to go home. Dorothy waited upon him, and Amanda ran about the house. The doctor and she had been friends from the first, and now, when he was at home, there was never any doubt where Amanda was to be found.

The same day on which the Drakes left him, Faber started by the night-train for London, and was absent three days.

Amanda was now perfectly well, but Mr. Drake continued poorly. Dorothy was anxious to get him away from the river-side, and proposed putting the workmen into the Old House at once. To this he readily consented, but would not listen to her suggestion that in the meantime he should go to some watering-place. He would be quite well in a day or two, and there was no rest for him, he said, until the work so sadly bungled was properly done. He did not believe his plans were defective, and could not help doubting whether they had been faithfully carried out. But the builder, a man of honest repute, protested also that he could not account for the yielding of the wall, except he had had the mishap to build over some deep drain, or old well, which was not likely, so close to the river. He offered to put it up again at his own expense, when perhaps they might discover the cause of the catastrophe.

Sundry opinions and more than one rumor were current among the neighbors. At last they were mostly divided into two parties, the one professing the conviction that the butcher, who was known to have some grudge at the minister, had, under the testudo-shelter of his slaughter-house, undermined the wall; the other indignantly asserting that the absurdity had no foundation except in the evil thoughts of churchmen toward dissenters, being in fact a wicked slander. When the suggestion reached the minister's ears, he, knowing the butcher, and believing the builder, was inclined to institute investigations; but as such a course was not likely to lead the butcher to repentance, he resolved instead to consult with him how his premises might be included in the defense. The butcher chuckled with conscious success, and for some months always chuckled when sharpening his knife; but by and by the coals of fire began to scorch, and went on scorching—the more that Mr. Drake very soon became his landlord, and voluntarily gave him several advantages. But he gave strict orders that there should be no dealings with him. It was one thing, he said, to be good to the sinner, and another to pass by his fault without confession, treating it like a mere personal affair which might be forgotten. Before the butcher died, there was not a man who knew him who did not believe he had undermined the wall. He left a will assigning all his property to trustees, for the building of a new chapel, but when his affairs came to be looked into, there was hardly enough to pay his debts.

The minister was now subject to a sort of ague, to which he paid far too little heed. When Dorothy was not immediately looking after him, he would slip out in any weather to see how things were going on in the Pottery. It was no wonder, therefore, that his health did not improve. But he could not be induced to regard his condition as at all serious.



CHAPTER XLVI.

THE MINISTER'S STUDY.

Helen was in the way of now and then writing music to any song that specially took her fancy—not with foolish hankering after publication, but for the pleasure of brooding in melody upon the words, and singing them to her husband. One day he brought her a few stanzas, by an unknown poet, which, he said, seemed to have in them a slightly new element. They pleased her more than him, and began at once to sing themselves. No sooner was her husband out of the room than she sat down to her piano with them. Before the evening, she had written to them an air with a simple accompaniment. When she now sung the verses to him, he told her, to her immense delight, that he understood and liked them far better. The next morning, having carried out one or two little suggestions he had made, she was singing them by herself in the drawing-room, when Faber, to whom she had sent because one of her servants was ill, entered. He made a sign begging her to continue, and she finished the song.

"Will you let me see the words," he said.

She handed them to him. He read them, laid down the manuscript, and, requesting to be taken to his patient, turned to the door. Perhaps he thought she had laid a music-snare for him.

The verses were these:

A YEAR SONG.

Sighing above, Rustling below, Through the woods The winds go. Beneath, dead crowds; Above, life bare; And the besom winds Sweep the air. Heart, leave thy woe; Let the dead things go.

Through the brown leaves Gold stars push; A mist of green Veils the bush. Here a twitter, There a croak! They are coming— The spring-folk! Heart, be not dumb; Let the live things come.

Through the beach The winds go, With a long speech, Loud and slow. The grass is fine, And soft to lie in; The sun doth shine The blue sky in. Heart, be alive; Let the new things thrive.

Round again! Here now— A rimy fruit On a bare bough! There the winter And the snow; And a sighing ever To fall and go! Heart, thy hour shall be; Thy dead will comfort thee.

Faber was still folded in the atmosphere of the song when, from the curate's door, he arrived at the minister's, resolved to make that morning a certain disclosure—one he would gladly have avoided, but felt bound in honor to make. The minister grew pale as he listened, but held his peace. Not until the point came at which he found himself personally concerned, did he utter a syllable.

I will in my own words give the substance of the doctor's communication, stating the facts a little more fairly to him than his pride would allow him to put them in his narrative.

Paul Faber was a student of St. Bartholomew's, and during some time held there the office of assistant house-surgeon. Soon after his appointment, he being then three and twenty, a young woman was taken into one of the wards, in whom he gradually grew much interested. Her complaint caused her much suffering, but was more tedious than dangerous.

Attracted by her sweet looks, but more by her patience, and the gratitude with which she received the attention shown her, he began to talk to her a little, especially during a slight operation that had to be not unfrequently performed. Then he came to giving her books to read, and was often charmed with the truth and simplicity of the remarks she would make. She had been earning her living as a clerk, had no friends in London, and therefore no place to betake herself to in her illness but the hospital. The day she left it, in the simplicity of her heart, and with much timidity, she gave him a chain she had made for him of her hair. On the ground of supplementary attention, partly desirable, partly a pretext, but unassociated with any evil intent, he visited her after in her lodging. The joy of her face, the light of her eyes when he appeared, was enchanting to him. She pleased every gentle element of his nature; her worship flattered him, her confidence bewitched him. His feelings toward her were such that he never doubted he was her friend. He did her no end of kindness; taught her much; gave her good advice as to her behavior, and the dangers she was in; would have protected her from every enemy, real and imaginary, while all the time, undesignedly, he was depriving her of the very nerve of self-defense. He still gave her books—and good books—Carlyle even, and Tennyson; read poetry with her, and taught her to read aloud; went to her chapel with her sometimes of a Sunday evening—for he was then, so he said, and so he imagined, a thorough believer in revelation. He took her to the theater, to pictures, to concerts, taking every care of her health, her manners, her principles. But one enemy he forgot to guard her against: how is a man to protect even the woman he loves from the hidden god of his idolatry—his own grand contemptible self?

It is needless to set the foot of narration upon every step of the slow-descending stair. With all his tender feelings and generous love of his kind, Paul Faber had not yet learned the simplest lesson of humanity—that he who would not be a murderer, must be his brother's keeper—still more his sister's, protecting every woman first of all from himself—from every untruth in him, chiefly from every unhallowed approach of his lower nature, from every thing that calls itself love and is but its black shadow, its demon ever murmuring I love, that it may devour. The priceless reward of such honesty is the power to love better; but let no man insult his nature by imagining himself noble for so carrying himself. As soon let him think himself noble that he is no swindler. Doubtless Faber said to himself as well as to her, and said it yet oftener when the recoil of his selfishness struck upon the door of his conscience and roused Don Worm, that he would be true to her forever. But what did he mean by the words? Did he know? Had they any sense of which he would not have been ashamed even before the girl herself? Would such truth as he contemplated make of him her hiding-place from the wind, her covert from the tempest? He never even thought whether to marry her or not, never vowed even in his heart not to marry another. All he could have said was, that at the time he had no intention of marrying another, and that he had the intention of keeping her for himself indefinitely, which may be all the notion some people have of eternally. But things went well with them, and they seemed to themselves, notwithstanding the tears shed by one of them in secret, only the better for the relation between them.

At length a child was born. The heart of a woman is indeed infinite, but time, her presence, her thoughts, her hands are finite: she could not seem so much a lover as before, because she must be a mother now: God only can think of two things at once. In his enduring selfishness, Faber felt the child come between them, and reproached her neglect, as he called it. She answered him gently and reasonably; but now his bonds began to weary him. She saw it, and in the misery of the waste vision opening before her eyes, her temper, till now sweet as devoted, began to change. And yet, while she loved her child the more passionately that she loved her forebodingly, almost with the love of a woman already forsaken, she was nearly mad sometimes with her own heart, that she could not give herself so utterly as before to her idol.

It took but one interview after he had confessed it to himself, to reveal the fact to her that she had grown a burden to him. He came a little seldomer, and by degrees which seemed to her terribly rapid, more and more seldom. He had never recognized duty in his relation to her. I do not mean that he had not done the effects of duty toward her; love had as yet prevented the necessity of appeal to the stern daughter of God. But what love with which our humanity is acquainted can keep healthy without calling in the aid of Duty? Perfect Love is the mother of all duties and all virtues, and needs not be admonished of her children; but not until Love is perfected, may she, casting out Fear, forget also Duty. And hence are the conditions of such a relation altogether incongruous. For the moment the man, not yet debased, admits a thought of duty, he is aware that far more is demanded of him than, even for the sake of purest right, he has either the courage or the conscience to yield. But even now Faber had not the most distant intention of forsaking her; only why should he let her burden him, and make his life miserable? There were other pleasures besides the company of the most childishly devoted of women: why should he not take them? Why should he give all his leisure to one who gave more than the half of it to her baby?

He had money of his own, and, never extravagant upon himself, was more liberal to the poor girl than ever she desired. But there was nothing mercenary in her. She was far more incapable of turpitude than he, for she was of a higher nature, and loved much where he loved only a little. She was nobler, sweetly prouder than he. She had sacrificed all to him for love—could accept nothing from him without the love which alone is the soul of any gift, alone makes it rich. She would not, could not see him unhappy. In her fine generosity, struggling to be strong, she said to herself, that, after all, she would leave him richer than she was before—richer than he was now. He would not want the child he had given her; she would, and she could, live for her, upon the memory of two years of such love as, comforting herself in sad womanly pride, she flattered herself woman had seldom enjoyed. She would not throw the past from her because the weather of time had changed; she would not mar every fair memory with the inky sponge of her present loss. She would turn her back upon her sun ere he set quite, and carry with her into the darkness the last gorgeous glow of his departure. While she had his child, should she never see him again, there remained a bond between them—a bond that could never be broken. He and she met in that child's life—her being was the eternal fact of their unity.

Both she and he had to learn that there was yet a closer bond between them, necessary indeed to the fact that a child could be born of them, namely, that they two had issued from the one perfect Heart of love. And every heart of perplexed man, although, too much for itself, it can not conceive how the thing should be, has to learn that there, in that heart whence it came, lies for it restoration, consolation, content. Herein, O God, lies a task for Thy perfection, for the might of Thy imagination—which needs but Thy will (and Thy suffering?) to be creation!

One evening when he paid her a visit after the absence of a week, he found her charmingly dressed, and merry, but in a strange fashion which he could not understand. The baby, she said, was down stairs with the landlady, and she free for her Paul. She read to him, she sang to him, she bewitched him afresh with the graces he had helped to develop in her. He said to himself when he left her that surely never was there a more gracious creature—and she was utterly his own! It was the last flicker of the dying light—the gorgeous sunset she had resolved to carry with her in her memory forever. When he sought her again the next evening, he found her landlady in tears. She had vanished, taking with her nothing but her child, and her child's garments. The gown she had worn the night before hung in her bedroom—every thing but what she must then be wearing was left behind. The woman wept, spoke of her with genuine affection, and said she had paid every thing. To his questioning she answered that they had gone away in a cab: she had called it, but knew neither the man nor his number. Persuading himself she had but gone to see some friend, he settled himself in her rooms to await her return, but a week rightly served to consume his hope. The iron entered into his soul, and for a time tortured him. He wept—but consoled himself that he wept, for it proved to himself that he was not heartless. He comforted himself further in the thought that she knew where to find him and that when trouble came upon her, she would remember how good he had been to her, and what a return she had made for it. Because he would not give up every thing to her, liberty and all, she had left him! And in revenge, having so long neglected him for the child, she had for the last once roused in her every power of enchantment, had brought her every charm into play, that she might lastingly bewitch him with the old spell, and the undying memory of their first bliss—then left him to his lonely misery! She had done what she could for the ruin of a man of education, a man of family, a man on the way to distinction!—a man of genius, he said even, but he was such only as every man is: he was a man of latent genius.

But verily, though our sympathy goes all with a woman like her, such a man, however little he deserves, and however much he would scorn it, is far more an object of pity. She has her love, has not been false thereto, and one day will through suffering find the path to the door of rest. When she left him, her soul was endlessly richer than his. The music, of which he said she knew nothing, in her soul moved a deep wave, while it blew but a sparkling ripple on his; the poetry they read together echoed in a far profounder depth of her being, and I do not believe she came to loathe it as he did; and when she read of Him who reasoned that the sins of a certain woman must have been forgiven her, else how could she love so much, she may well have been able, from the depth of such another loving heart, to believe utterly in Him—while we know that her poor, shrunken lover came to think it manly, honest, reasonable, meritorious to deny Him.

Weeks, months, years passed, but she never sought him; and he so far forgot her by ceasing to think of her, that at length, when a chance bubble did rise from the drowned memory, it broke instantly and vanished. As to the child, he had almost forgotten whether it was a boy or a girl.

But since, in his new desolation, he discovered her, beyond a doubt, in the little Amanda, old memories had been crowding back upon his heart, and he had begun to perceive how Amanda's mother must have felt when she saw his love decaying visibly before her, and to suspect that it was in the self-immolation of love that she had left him. His own character had been hitherto so uniformly pervaded with a refined selfishness as to afford no standpoint of a different soil, whence by contrast to recognize the true nature of the rest; but now it began to reveal itself to his conscious judgment. And at last it struck him that twice he had been left—by women whom he loved—at least by women who loved him. Two women had trusted him utterly, and he had failed them both! Next followed the thought stinging him to the heart, that the former was the purer of the two; that the one on whom he had looked down because of her lack of education, and her familiarity with humble things and simple forms of life, knew nothing of what men count evil, while she in whom he had worshiped refinement, intellect, culture, beauty, song—she who, in love-teachableness had received his doctrine against all the prejudices of her education, was—what she had confessed herself!

But, against all reason and logic, the result of this comparison was, that Juliet returned fresh to his imagination in all the first witchery of her loveliness; and presently he found himself for the first time making excuses for her; if she had deceived him she had deceived him from love; whatever her past, she had been true to him, and was, from the moment she loved him, incapable of wrong.—He had cast her from him, and she had sought refuge in the arms of the only rival he ever would have had to fear—the bare-ribbed Death!

Naturally followed the reflection—what was he to demand purity of any woman?—Had he not accepted—yes, tempted, enticed from the woman who preceded her, the sacrifice of one of the wings of her soul on the altar of his selfishness! then driven her from him, thus maimed and helpless, to the mercy of the rude blasts of the world! She, not he ever, had been the noble one, the bountiful giver, the victim of shameless ingratitude. Flattering himself that misery would drive her back to him, he had not made a single effort to find her, or mourned that he could never make up to her for the wrongs he had done her. He had not even hoped for a future in which he might humble himself before her! What room was there here to talk of honor! If she had not sunk to the streets it was through her own virtue, and none of his care! And now she was dead! and his child, but for the charity of a despised superstition, would have been left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the old-faced weakling of a London workhouse!



CHAPTER XLVII.

THE BLOWING OF THE WIND.

Smaller and smaller Faber felt as he pursued his plain, courageous confession of wrong to the man whose life was even now in peril for the sake of his neglected child. When he concluded with the expression of his conviction that Amanda was his daughter, then first the old minister spoke. His love had made him guess what was coming, and he was on his guard.

"May I ask what is your object in making this statement to me, Mr. Faber?" he said coldly.

"I am conscious of none but to confess the truth, and perform any duty that may be mine in consequence of the discovery," said the doctor.

"Do you wish this truth published to the people of Glaston?" inquired the minister, in the same icy tone.

"I have no such desire: but I am of course prepared to confess Amanda my child, and to make you what amends may be possible for the trouble and expense she has occasioned you."

"Trouble! Expense!" cried the minister fiercely. "Do you mean in your cold-blooded heart, that, because you, who have no claim to the child but that of self-indulgence—because you believe her yours, I who have for years carried her in my bosom, am going to give her up to a man, who, all these years, has made not one effort to discover his missing child? In the sight of God, which of us is her father? But I forget; that is a question you can not understand. Whether or not you are her father, I do not care a straw. You have not proved it; and I tell you that, until the court of chancery orders me to deliver up my darling to you, to be taught there is no living Father of men—and that by the fittest of all men to enforce the lie—not until then will I yield a hair of her head to you. God grant, if you were her father, her mother had more part in her than you!—A thousand times rather I would we had both perished in the roaring mud, than that I should have to give her up to you."

He struck his fist on the table, rose, and turned from him. Faber also rose, quietly, silent and pale. He stood a moment, waiting. Mr. Drake turned. Faber made him an obeisance, and left the room.

The minister was too hard upon him. He would not have been so hard but for his atheism; he would not have been so hard if he could have seen into his soul. But Faber felt he deserved it. Ere he reached home, however, he had begun to think it rather hard that, when a man confessed a wrong, and desired to make what reparation he could, he should have the very candor of his confession thus thrown in his teeth. Verily, even toward the righteous among men, candor is a perilous duty.

He entered the surgery. There he had been making some experiments with peroxide of manganese, a solution of which stood in a bottle on the table. A ray of brilliant sunlight was upon it, casting its shadow on a piece of white paper, a glorious red. It caught his eyes. He could never tell what it had to do with the current of his thoughts, but neither could he afterward get rid of the feeling that it had had some influence upon it. For as he looked at it, scarcely knowing he did, and thinking still how hard the minister had been upon him, suddenly he found himself in the minister's place, and before him Juliet making her sad confession: how had he met that confession? The whole scene returned, and for the first time struck him right on the heart, and then first he began to be in reality humbled in his own eyes. What if, after all, he was but a poor creature? What if, instead of having any thing to be proud of, he was in reality one who, before any jury of men or women called to judge him, must hide his head in shame?

The thought once allowed to enter and remain long enough to be questioned, never more went far from him. For a time he walked in the midst of a dull cloud, first of dread, then of dismay—a cloud from which came thunders, and lightnings, and rain. It passed, and a doubtful dawn rose dim and scared upon his consciousness, a dawn in which the sun did not appear, and on which followed a gray, solemn day. A humbler regard of himself had taken the place of confidence and satisfaction. An undefined hunger, far from understood by himself, but having vaguely for its object clearance and atonement and personal purity even, had begun to grow, and move within him. The thought stung him with keen self-contempt, yet think he must and did, that a woman might be spotted not a little, and yet be good enough for him in the eyes of retributive justice. He saw plainly that his treatment of his wife, knowing what he did of himself, was a far worse shame than any fault of which a girl, such as Juliet was at the time, could have been guilty. And with that, for all that he believed it utterly in vain, his longing after the love he had lost, grew and grew, ever passing over into sickening despair, and then springing afresh; he longed for Juliet as she had prayed to him—as the only power that could make him clean; it seemed somehow as if she could even help him in his repentance for the wrong done to Amanda's mother. The pride of the Pharisee was gone, the dignity of the husband had vanished, and his soul longed after the love that covers a multitude of sins, as the air in which alone his spirit could breathe and live and find room. I set it down briefly: the change passed upon him by many degrees, with countless alternations of mood and feeling, and without the smallest conscious change of opinion.

The rest of the day after receiving Faber's communication, poor Mr. Drake roamed about like one on the verge of insanity, struggling to retain lawful dominion over his thoughts. At times he was lost in apprehensive melancholy, at times roused to such fierce anger that he had to restrain himself from audible malediction. The following day Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse attack of the fever than ever before, but he declared that the man should never again cross his threshold. Dorothy concluded there had been a fresh outbreak between them of the old volcano. He grew worse and worse, and did not object to her sending for Dr. Mather; but he did not do him much good. He was in a very critical state, and Dorothy was miserable about him. The fever was persistent, and the cough which he had had ever since the day that brought his illness, grew worse. His friends would gladly have prevailed upon him to seek a warmer climate, but he would not hear of it.

Upon one occasion, Dorothy, encouraged by the presence of Dr. Mather, was entreating him afresh to go somewhere from home for a while.

"No, no: what would become of my money?" he answered, with a smile which Dorothy understood. The doctor imagined it the speech of a man whom previous poverty and suddenly supervening wealth had made penurious.

"Oh!" he remarked reassuringly, "you need not spend a penny more abroad than you do at home. The difference in the living would, in some places, quite make up for the expense of the journey."

The minister looked bewildered for a moment, then seemed to find himself, smiled again, and replied—

"You do not quite understand me: I have a great deal of money to spend, and it ought to be spent here in England where it was made—God knows how."

"You may get help to spend it in England, without throwing your life away with it," said the doctor, who could not help thinking of his own large family.

"Yes, I dare say I might—from many—but it was given me to spend—in destroying injustice, in doing to men as others ought to have done to them. My preaching was such a poor affair that it is taken from me, and a lower calling given me—to spend money. If I do not well with that, then indeed I am a lost man. If I be not faithful in that which is another's, who will give me that which is my own? If I can not further the coming of Christ, I can at least make a road or two, exalt a valley or two, to prepare His way before Him."

Thereupon it was the doctor's turn to smile. All that was to him as if spoken in a language unknown, except that he recognized the religious tone in it. "The man is true to his profession," he said to himself, "—as he ought to be of course; but catch me spending my money that way, if I had but a hold of it!"

His father died soon after, and he got a hold of the money he called his, whereupon he parted with his practice, and by idleness and self-indulgence, knowing all the time what he was about, brought on an infirmity which no skill could cure, and is now a grumbling invalid, at one or another of the German spas. I mention it partly because many preferred this man to Faber on the ground that he went to church every Sunday, and always shook his head at the other's atheism.

Faber wrote a kind, respectful letter, somewhat injured in tone, to the minister, saying he was much concerned to hear that he was not so well, and expressing his apprehension that he himself had been in some measure the cause of his relapse. He begged leave to assure him that he perfectly recognized the absolute superiority of Mr. Drake's claim to the child. He had never dreamed of asserting any right in her, except so much as was implied in the acknowledgment of his duty to restore the expense which his wrong and neglect had caused her true father; beyond that he well knew he could make no return save in gratitude; but if he might, for the very partial easing of his conscience, be permitted to supply the means of the child's education, he was ready to sign an agreement that all else connected with it should be left entirely to Mr. Drake. He begged to be allowed to see her sometimes, for, long ere a suspicion had crossed his mind that she was his, the child was already dear to him. He was certain that her mother would have much preferred Mr. Drake's influence to his own, and for her sake also, he would be careful to disturb nothing. But he hoped Mr. Drake would remember that, however unworthy, he was still her father.

The minister was touched by the letter, moved also in the hope that an arrow from the quiver of truth had found in the doctor a vulnerable spot. He answered that he should be welcome to see the child when he would; and that she should go to him when he pleased. He must promise, however, as the honest man every body knew him to be, not to teach her there was no God, or lead her to despise the instructions she received at home.

The word honest was to Faber like a blow. He had come to the painful conclusion that he was neither honest man nor gentleman. Doubtless he would have knocked any one down who told him so, but then who had the right to take with him the liberties of a conscience? Pure love only, I suspect, can do that without wrong. He would not try less to be honest in the time to come, but he had never been, and could no more ever feel honest. It did not matter much. What was there worth any effort? All was flat and miserable—a hideous long life! What did it matter what he was, so long as he hurt nobody any more! He was tired of it all.

It added greatly to his despondency that he found he could no longer trust his temper. That the cause might be purely physical was no consolation to him. He had been accustomed to depend on his imperturbability, and now he could scarcely recall the feeling of the mental condition. He did not suspect how much the change was owing to his new-gained insight into his character, and the haunting dissatisfaction it caused.

To the minister he replied that he had been learning a good deal of late, and among other things that the casting away of superstition did not necessarily do much for the development of the moral nature; in consequence of which discovery, he did not feel bound as before to propagate the negative portions of his creed. If its denials were true, he no longer believed them powerful for good; and merely as facts he did not see that a man was required to disseminate them. Even here, however, his opinion must go for little, seeing he had ceased to care much for any thing, true or false. Life was no longer of any value to him, except indeed he could be of service to Amanda. Mr. Drake might be assured she was the last person on whom he would wish to bring to bear any of the opinions so objectionable in his eyes. He would make him the most comprehensive promise to that effect. Would Mr. Drake allow him to say one thing more?—He was heartily ashamed of his past history; and if there was one thing to make him wish there were a God—of which he saw no chance—it was that he might beg of Him the power to make up for the wrongs he had done, even if it should require an eternity of atonement. Until he could hope for that, he must sincerely hold that his was the better belief, as well as the likelier—namely, that the wronger and the wronged went into darkness, friendly with oblivion, joy and sorrow alike forgotten, there to bid adieu both to reproach and self-contempt. For himself he had no desire after prolonged existence. Why should he desire to live a day, not to say forever—worth nothing to himself, or to any one? If there were a God, he would rather entreat Him, and that he would do humbly enough, to unmake him again. Certainly, if there were a God, He had not done over well by His creatures, making them so ignorant and feeble that they could not fail to fall. Would Mr. Drake have made his Amanda so?

When Wingfold read the letter of which I have thus given the substance—it was not until a long time after, in Polwarth's room—he folded it softly together and said:

"When he wrote that letter, Paul Faber was already becoming not merely a man to love, but a man to revere." After a pause he added, "But what a world it would be, filled with contented men, all capable of doing the things for which they would despise themselves."

It was some time before the minister was able to answer the letter except by sending Amanda at once to the doctor with a message of kind regards and thanks. But his inability to reply was quite as much from the letter's giving him so much to think of first, as from his weakness and fever. For he saw that to preach, as it was commonly understood, the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins to such a man, would be useless: he would rather believe in a God who would punish them, than in One who would pass them by. To be told he was forgiven, would but rouse in him contemptuous indignation. "What is that to me?" he would return. "I remain what I am." Then grew up in the mind of the minister the following plant of thought: "Things divine can only be shadowed in the human; what is in man must be understood of God with the divine difference—not only of degree, but of kind, involved in the fact that He makes me, I can make nothing, and if I could, should yet be no less a creature of Him the Creator; therefore, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and what we call His forgiveness may be, must be something altogether transcending the conception of man—overwhelming to such need as even that of Paul Faber, whose soul has begun to hunger after righteousness, and whose hunger must be a hunger that will not easily be satisfied." For a poor nature will for a time be satisfied with a middling God; but as the nature grows richer, the ideal of the God desired grows greater. The true man can be satisfied only with a God of magnificence, never with a God such as in his childhood and youth had been presented to Faber as the God of the Bible. That God only whom Christ reveals to the humble seeker, can ever satisfy human soul.

Then it came into the minister's mind, thinking over Faber's religion toward his fellows, and his lack toward God, how when the young man asked Jesus what commandments he must keep up that he might inherit eternal life, Jesus did not say a word concerning those of the first table—not a word, that is, about his duty toward God; He spoke only of his duty toward man. Then it struck him that our Lord gave him no sketch or summary or part of a religious system—only told him what he asked, the practical steps by which he might begin to climb toward eternal life. One thing he lacked—namely, God Himself, but as to how God would meet him, Jesus says nothing, but Himself meets him on those steps with the offer of God. He treats the duties of the second table as a stair to the first—a stair which, probably by its crumbling away in failure beneath his feet as he ascended, would lift him to such a vision and such a horror of final frustration, as would make him stretch forth his hands, like the sinking Peter, to the living God, the life eternal which he blindly sought, without whose closest presence he could never do the simplest duty aright, even of those he had been doing from his youth up. His measure of success, and his sense of utter failure, would together lift him toward the One Good.

Thus, looking out upon truth from the cave of his brother's need, and seeing the direction in which the shadow of his atheism fell, the minister learned in what direction the clouded light lay, and turning his gaze thitherward, learned much. It is only the aged who have dropped thinking that become stupid. Such can learn no more, until first their young nurse Death has taken off their clothes, and put the old babies to bed. Of such was not Walter Drake. Certain of his formerly petted doctrines he now threw away as worse than rubbish; others he dropped with indifference; of some it was as if the angels picked his pockets without his knowing it, or ever missing them; and still he found, whatever so-called doctrine he parted with, that the one glowing truth which had lain at the heart of it, buried, mired, obscured, not only remained with him, but shone out fresh, restored to itself by the loss of the clay-lump of worldly figures and phrases, in which the human intellect had inclosed it. His faith was elevated, and so confirmed.



CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE BORDER-LAND.

Mr. Drew, the draper, was, of all his friends, the one who most frequently visited his old pastor. He had been the first, although a deacon of the church, in part to forsake his ministry, and join the worship of, as he honestly believed, a less scriptural community, because in the abbey church he heard better news of God and His Kingdom: to him rightly the gospel was every thing, and this church or that, save for its sake, less than nothing and vanity. It had hurt Mr. Drake not a little at first, but he found Drew in consequence only the more warmly his personal friend, and since learning to know Wingfold, had heartily justified his defection; and now that he was laid up, he missed something any day that passed without a visit from the draper. One evening Drew found him very poorly, though neither the doctor nor Dorothy could prevail upon him to go to bed. He could not rest, but kept walking about, his eye feverish, his pulse fluttering. He welcomed his friend even more warmly than usual, and made him sit by the fire, while he paced the room, turning and turning, like a caged animal that fain would be king of infinite space.

"I am sorry to see you so uncomfortable," said Mr. Drew.

"On the contrary, I feel uncommonly well," replied the pastor. "I always measure my health by my power of thinking; and to-night my thoughts are like birds—or like bees rather, that keep flying in delight from one lovely blossom to another. Only the fear keeps intruding that an hour may be at hand, when my soul will be dark, and it will seem as if the Lord had forsaken me."

"But does not our daily bread mean our spiritual as well as our bodily bread?" said the draper. "Is it not just as wrong in respect of the one as of the other to distrust God for to-morrow when you have enough for to-day? Is He a God of times and seasons, of this and that, or is He the All in all?"

"You are right, old friend," said the minister, and ceasing his walk, he sat down by the fire opposite him. "I am faithless still.—O Father in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread.—I suspect, Drew, that I have had as yet no more than the shadow of an idea how immediately I—we live upon the Father.—I will tell you something. I had been thinking what it would be if God were now to try me with heavenly poverty, as for a short time he tried me with earthly poverty—that is, if he were to stint me of life itself—not give me enough of Himself to live upon—enough to make existence feel a good. The fancy grew to a fear, laid hold upon me, and made me miserable. Suppose, for instance, I said to myself, I were no more to have any larger visitation of thoughts and hopes and aspirations than old Mrs. Bloxam, who sits from morning to night with the same stocking on her needles, and absolutely the same expression, of as near nothing as may be upon human countenance, nor changes whoever speaks to her!"

"She says the Lord is with her," suggested the draper.

"Well!" rejoined the minister, in a slow, cogitative tone.

"And plainly life is to her worth having," added the draper. "Clearly she has as much of life as is necessary to her present stage."

"You are right. I have been saying just the same things to myself; and, I trust, when the Lord comes, He will not find me without faith. But just suppose life were to grow altogether uninteresting! Suppose certain moods—such as you, with all your good spirits and blessed temper, must surely sometimes have experienced—suppose they were to become fixed, and life to seem utterly dull, God nowhere, and your own dreary self, and nothing but that self, everywhere!"

"Let me read you a chapter of St. John," said the draper.

"Presently I will. But I am not in the right mood just this moment. Let me tell you first how I came by my present mood. Don't mistake me: I am not possessed by the idea—I am only trying to understand its nature, and set a trap fit to catch it, if it should creep into my inner premises, and from an idea swell to a seeming fact.—Well, I had a strange kind of a vision last night—no, not a vision—yes, a kind of vision—anyhow a very strange experience. I don't know whether the draught the doctor gave me—I wish I had poor Faber back—this fellow is fitter to doctor oxen and mules than men!—I don't know whether the draught had any thing to do with it—I thought I tasted something sleepy in it—anyhow, thought is thought, and truth is truth, whatever drug, no less than whatever joy or sorrow, may have been midwife to it. The first I remember of the mental experience, whatever it may have to be called, is, that I was coming awake—returning to myself after some period wherein consciousness had been quiescent. Of place, or time, or circumstance, I knew nothing. I was only growing aware of being. I speculated upon nothing. I did not even say to myself, 'I was dead, and now I am coming alive.' I only felt. And I had but one feeling—and that feeling was love—the outgoing of a longing heart toward—I could not tell what;—toward—I can not describe the feeling—toward the only existence there was, and that was every thing;—toward pure being, not as an abstraction, but as the one actual fact, whence the world, men, and me—a something I knew only by being myself an existence. It was more me than myself; yet it was not me, or I could not have loved it. I never thought me myself by myself; my very existence was the consciousness of this absolute existence in and through and around me: it made my heart burn, and the burning of my heart was my life—and the burning was the presence of the Absolute. If you can imagine a growing fruit, all blind and deaf, yet loving the tree it could neither look upon nor hear, knowing it only through the unbroken arrival of its life therefrom—that is something like what I felt. I suspect the form of the feeling was supplied by a shadowy memory of the time before I was born, while yet my life grew upon the life of my mother.

"By degrees came a change. What seemed the fire in me, burned and burned until it began to grow light; in which light I began to remember things I had read and known about Jesus Christ and His Father and my Father. And with those memories the love grew and grew, till I could hardly bear the glory of God and His Christ, it made me love so intensely. Then the light seemed to begin to pass out beyond me somehow, and therewith I remembered the words of the Lord, 'Let your light so shine before men,' only I was not letting it shine, for while I loved like that, I could no more keep it from shining than I could the sun. The next thing was, that I began to think of one I had loved, then of another and another and another—then of all together whom ever I had loved, one after another, then all together. And the light that went out from me was as a nimbus infolding every one in the speechlessness of my love. But lo! then, the light staid not there, but, leaving them not, went on beyond them, reaching and infolding every one of those also, whom, after the manner of men, I had on earth merely known and not loved. And therewith I knew that, for all the rest of the creation of God, I needed but the hearing of the ears or the seeing of the eyes to love each and every one, in his and her degree; whereupon such a perfection of bliss awoke in me, that it seemed as if the fire of the divine sacrifice had at length seized upon my soul, and I was dying of absolute glory—which is love and love only. I had all things, yea the All. I was full and unutterably, immeasurably content. Yet still the light went flowing out and out from me, and love was life and life was light and light was love. On and on it flowed, until at last it grew eyes to me, and I could see. Lo! before me was the multitude of the brothers and sisters whom I loved—individually—a many, many—not a mass;—I loved every individual with that special, peculiar kind of love which alone belonged to that one, and to that one alone. The sight dazzled the eyes which love itself had opened. I said to myself, 'Ah, how radiant, how lovely, how divine they are! and they are mine, every one—the many, for I love them!'

"Then suddenly came a whisper—not to my ear—I heard it far away, but whether in some distant cave of thought, away beyond the flaming walls of the universe, or in some forgotten dungeon-corner of my own heart, I could not tell. 'O man,' it said, 'what a being, what a life is thine! See all these souls, these fires of life, regarding and loving thee! It is in the glory of thy love their faces shine. Their hearts receive it, and send it back in joy. Seest thou not all their eyes fixed upon thine? Seest thou not the light come and go upon their faces, as the pulses of thy heart flow and ebb? See, now they flash, and now they fade! Blessed art thou, O man, as none else in the universe of God is blessed!'

"It was, or seemed, only a voice. But therewith, horrible to tell, the glow of another fire arose in me—an orange and red fire, and it went out from me, and withered all the faces, and the next moment there was darkness—all was black as night. But my being was still awake—only if then there was bliss, now was there the absolute blackness of darkness, the positive negation of bliss, the recoil of self to devour itself, and forever. The consciousness of being was intense, but in all the universe was there nothing to enter that being, and make it other than an absolute loneliness. It was, and forever, a loveless, careless, hopeless monotony of self-knowing—a hell with but one demon, and no fire to make it cry: my self was the hell, my known self the demon of it—a hell of which I could not find the walls, cold and dark and empty, and I longed for a flame that I might know there was a God. Somehow I only remembered God as a word, however; I knew nothing of my whence or whither. One time there might have been a God, but there was none now: if there ever was one, He must be dead. Certainly there was no God to love—for if there was a God, how could the creature whose very essence was to him an evil, love the Creator of him? I had the word love, and I could reason about it in my mind, but I could not call up the memory of what the feeling of it was like. The blackness grew and grew. I hated life fiercely. I hated the very possibility of a God who had created me a blot, a blackness. With that I felt blackness begin to go out from me, as the light had gone before—not that I remembered the light; I had forgotten all about it, and remembered it only after I awoke. Then came the words of the Lord to me: 'If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!' And I knew what was coming: oh, horror! in a moment more I should see the faces of those I had once loved, dark with the blackness that went out from my very existence; then I should hate them, and my being would then be a hell to which the hell I now was would be a heaven! There was just grace enough left in me for the hideousness of the terror to wake me. I was cold as if I had been dipped in a well. But oh, how I thanked God that I was what I am, and might yet hope after what I may be!"

The minister's face was pale as the horse that grew gray when Death mounted him; and his eyes shone with a feverous brilliancy. The draper breathed a deep breath, and rubbed his white forehead. The minister rose and began again to pace the room. Drew would have taken his departure, but feared leaving him in such a state. He bethought himself of something that might help to calm him, and took out his pocket-book. The minister's dream had moved him deeply, but he restrained himself all he could from manifesting his emotion.