duty to interfere. I wanted to deal kindly and fairly with her, and I challenged her to an argument. Well, I never was so borne down and insulted in my life. The climax was, I told her I did not like such an influence among my children."

"That is enough, Uncle!' she said. 'My baleful light shall be seen no more here. It shall gleam amid the altar lights, or over the marshes you esteem so fatal!'

"I took that for one of her high-flown speeches, but, like the prodigal in the parable, she asked of me the portion which belonged to her, and went her way."

"Whither?" asked Maurice, with intense solicitude. "Into a very hot-bed of anti-Evangelicalism. She is governess in the family of a clergyman, who is nothing better than a Jesuit in disguise, making proselytes to the Church of Rome. You'll see that is what it will come to with Mabel. A mind like hers will not be satisfied with the husks of Ritualism. It will find the service an empty weariness-a child's play. In time the baby-hand will cease toying with the fringes, and will lay hold on the whole garment. Yet, if you were to speak to her, she would tell you that she had no settled creed. Her championship is for faith in all, and for liberty to choose that most in accordance with her own mind and character. She has an odd way,

now, of sneering at, as transcendental, the theories of inward excellence and culture which you and she, as boy and girl, were so vastly taken up with."

"Good God!" groaned Maurice, leaning back in his chair. "Has she been, then, so easily allowed to go? Has no effort been made to allure her and save her and bring her back?"

“I told you, Maurice, that I had tried," said Mr. Wetherill, in an injured tone.

"Give me her address. I shall go and see her at once."

"You are welcome; but, for any effort you may make, you will only, for all your pains, be insuited."

Mr. Wetherill spoke the truth when he said that he had tried to refute his niece's heterodoxy. He had tried and tried with a vengeance. He was, as we have said, dogmatic, and, with all his good nature, apt to be hard and unconciliatory, if thoroughly aroused. His mode of dealing with Mabel had been as wise as if one were to try to remedy the defects in a Parian bust by thrusting it into a smithy-fire and beating it afterwards upon an anvil.

CHAPTER XVII.

"And thought is rebel; and desire
Alternate smoulders and leaps higher,
Like some half-dead volcano's fire.

"E'en as for rain the cedars pant,

E'en as the harts the brooklets haunt,
Men heave and throb with mighty want.”

SABBATH CHIMES.

MAURICE went after the stray sheep, sorrowing. Arrived at the Dean of Oldbury's, he asked for permission to see Miss Gordon; but he was informed by the dean's lady that, "To-day being the day of God's Holy Apostle Saint Luke, Miss Gordon had gone to church with her pupils. Would Mr. Wetherill wait?”

He declined, and at once betook himself to the church.

The service was conducted by no less than three or four clergymen, or priests, as they are now choosing to style themselves. Through the prayers they made a great show of crossing the aisle and passing and repassing one another, after the manner of Roman Catholic priests at mass. Poor priests empty-handed of a sacrifice! They may well take to bowings and

crossings and ecclesiastic millinery. These things divert the eye of the people, and keep it from straining towards the King immortal, invisible; towards the Highpriest, within the veil, whom they know not how to present, not having themselves found "the way of

access."

Maurice did not, could not, join in the service. He remained almost as purely a spectator as he had done when he was in St. Peter's.

From where he sat, he could see Mabel, her beautiful face turned eastward. Sunbeam pencils touched up with their burnished gold the masses of her luxuriant, auburn hair, till they looked more like plumes borrowed from an angel's wing than the natural glory of woman. But all that the soul-searching, soul-adoring eye of Maurice Wetherill saw, was the sad, imperious, bitter face, which he had known so mobile in its play of pure, exalted emotions. "Will it be so very difficult to reclaim her?" he asked himself. "She is not happy in the falsely-lighted ravines into which she has so unhappily strayed. She has the air of one who seeketh rest and findeth it not. Well, she may resist me; but God's Holy Spirit will not leave her to her fate. He will find her out, wherever she may be. How they drawl the prayers out here! They must think that they need to be fine-spun in order to reach to

Heaven. And for the reading of the lesson! is it really the reader's design to keep the words from reaching the ears of the people? The Koran would not be more unintelligible."

He listened with some curiosity to the sermon. It lasted just six minutes. When, in conclusion, the prayer "for the words which had been heard with the outward ears was pronounced, Maurice was so disgusted at the mockery that he could scarcely refrain from signs audible of his impatience. He waited in the church till the congregation had dispersed; he followed Mabel without her being aware of it. Just as the dean, by a side door, left the vestry, he touched her on the shoulder. All the blood went up to her face in a rush, and then, receding, left it as white as a statue. Her pupils, two tall girls, seeing that Miss Gordon had met with a friend, left her to join their papa, so Mabel and Maurice were left alone.

Under a broad, sweeping elm-tree he stood with her, still retaining in his own, her nerveless, responseless hand. His eyes, hollow with suffering, seemed to look down into hers with a deeper gaze than they had ever done. She tried to appear unconscious of their mute questioning.

"You have taken me by surprise, Cousin Maurice."