visited Petherington Hall, and was in a position to contradict nearly every detail of gossip; at all events, I felt that I could do so. Mrs. Pensax was not a happy woman. I could see that. There was a general evidence of meanness and want of taste in the arrangements of the house, but no ground for the wild rumours and equally wild 'statements by eye-witnesses' which had possession of Wulstan. However, within five weeks of her marriage Mrs. Pensax fled from her husband."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "fled-ran away? And where is she now?"

"Nobody knows," said my father, lowering his voice to a whisper; "nobody but Ruth."

"Mrs. Pensax made some explanation to the Dean in a letter, which she sent to him by Trigg, who was under cross-examination in the Dean's room for an hour. The next morning, the Dean lying later than usual, his man went into his room and found him dead."

My father laid his pipe down and looked into the fire and sighed heavily. My thoughts went to Ruth. My heart bled for her. To think that all this time I was in another world, as it were; farther from her than if I had been at the Antipodes!

"It is a very sad story, father; a heart-rending story," I said. "It is indeed," said my father, "it is indeed."

That night I heard the surging blast wander round the timbered house. The November wind was hoarse with winter snow. I heard the Spirit of the Tempest cry aloud. Sounds of battle fell upon my ear. I saw troops dashing through the echoing streets. There was a dead cavalier in the hall. Robin of Portingale's wife was lying stark and cold in the snow. Plaintive voices were in the wind. I heard the bell tolling for the broken-hearted Dean. I saw the marriage guests put on their mourning cloth. Then the roaring of the seas took up the sound of the tempest, and I saw on a foreign strand the ghost of Mary Oswald wandering alone by the billows. O for the voice of Cona to set to the poetry of words the thoughts and the pictures that haunted me then, that come and go in my memory now, after this long, cold lapse of years!

CHAPTER XIII.

OUT OF THE SHADOW.

I SAT beside her for many days during that dark November weather. My father complained that there was no light for painting. Yet Ruth and he stood before their easels. The fire made a merry

sound upon the hearth. clamour into a sad, quiet monotone. The crooked trees in the garden were silent and still. The snow melted away, and left the stunted grass and plants to the mercy of the wintry air.

The wind came down from its noisy

Ruth came almost every day to my father's studio. I see her now in a plain black dress that seems to cling about her and give roundness to her lithe and supple figure. It is not unlike a modern fashion. The old Squire's daughters have just returned from London with dresses not unlike that worn by Ruth. It is short in the waist, and sufficiently low in the neck to exhibit the graceful roundness of the throat. Her dark hair falls upon her shoulders. In her left hand she holds a mawl-stick, upon which her right arm rests while she rubs in the background of a wild bit of landscape for a picture of Fingal engaging the Spirit of Loda. My father is putting in the two strange warriors. He is a little uneasy without his pipe, but Ruth's most earnest entreaties will not induce him to light it. No matter that she says artists are permitted every licence in this respect, he will only smoke when she is gone, and then he sits over the fire and talks about her with a loving tenderness that is sweet and pleasant beyond all description to his happy listener.

I chide my memory when I think that this time of darkness and sorrow to Ruth had so much sunshine for me. How could I be unhappy sitting beside her, with my heart full of her image? Oh, the wonderful things we talked about in those days! We designed subjects for pictures by the score. Ossian was our principal theme. The very sadness of the poet seemed to have a dispelling influence upon our sorrows. Standing in the presence of his mournful pictures, our own woes would now and then become dwarfed, or receive a halo of poetry which lifted them from the earth and made their weight lighter to bear. My father would argue that the Celtic bard was superior in many respects to Homer. He acknowledged the vastness of Homer's knowledge, the splendid variety of his workits vivacity, its power; but he claimed for Ossian a higher dignity of sentiment, a truer pathos, and a more consummate skill in describing nature. We talked of the origin of the heathen idolatry and mythological divinity, and I find intellectual refreshment for the mind. even now in the memory of some of those discussions. My father was a better read man than I had believed him to be up to this time. He traced tradition back to the first Cataclysm, thence down to the first Olympiad. He filled that interval of darkness, when there were no written records, with marvellous tales. The people had certain vague notions of the Deity and the ministry of angels. They

combined these ideas with stories of their kings and heroes, and the latter they deified, ascribing to their gods all the infirmities of mankind. These fables were exaggerated and filled with superstitious wonders. Hence originated the stories of Jupiter and the Centimani, and Pelion and Ossa, Bacchus and Theseus, Andromede and Medea; and these were the original versions of our tales of giants, knighterrants, and rescuing of kings' daughters from enchanters and dragons.

"These," said my father, 66 were the views of an old Sussex rector in 1700, whose manuscripts upon Theism I discovered in the Cathedral library last year. It was in great measure owing to the deifying of princes," continued my father, putting in the finishing touches to Fingal's shield; "for most of those gods which were worshipped by the old heathen were formerly kings of the country they adored. Your teaching at Oxford, I imagine, George, must have settled in your mind the conviction that the great Assyrian Belus was either Nimrod or some other great prince of that country. The Greek Jupiter was King of Crete; Saturnus, Janus, Faunus, Fatua, Romulus were princes of Italy. Juno was the old Jana, and Saturn was the true name of that old king whose name is still preserved in the Teutonic Seater. Bacchus was a great conqueror in the East, and Ceres, or Isis, a queen of Egypt. And this was the origin of idolatry, Miss Ruth, according to my Sussex friend, in whom I implicitly believe. These deities were first adopted as tutelar gods of the place, and worshipped with the Supreme God, but in time, like saint-worship, they took the place of the Supreme Being. Besides people stood upon punctilios of honour to have their particular god the greatest god; so that there was not any little hedge-god of a puny province that his votaries did not regard as equal to the gods of the King of Assyria. There is a subject for George's first sermon." And this was my theme, written to the text of "Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me." I preached it in our own parish church soon after my ordination, and I illustrated an early form of idolatry by the very ancient writing of Job in that passage where he disowns having worshipped the sun or moon. "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth has kissed my hand; this were also an iniquity to be punished by the Judge, for I should have denied the God that is above." My father and Ruth sat and listened to the young preacher, sat in the old family pew. Canon Molineau was there also, and he came and dined with us afterwards. The time was close upon Christmas. By the end of November I had

sufficiently recovered from my illness to go through the solemn ceremony of ordination. In the middle of December I preached my first sermon. All this time Ruth had been staying at the Deanery alone. The Dean had no female relatives. During a portion of the time, Mrs. Trigg had kept house there; this was after Mrs. Pensax had left Petherington Hall. It turned out that all the Dean's property belonged to Mr. Pensax, and there was some talk of a sale by auction. The startling fact that by and by Ruth would have no home dawned upon me early in December. A new Dean had been appointed, and he was expected to arrive early in the new year. The late Dean's lawyers had made various remarkable revelations to my father and also to Ruth. The Dean had died without a will, and the whole of his deeds and securities were in the hands of Mr. Pensax. This seemed to trouble my father greatly. Wulstan said the Dean had died insolvent, and had done serious injury to some of his friends who had backed bills for him to cover overdraws at the bank, and to secure Pensax's advances. It was a remarkable story to tell in connection with a Dean; but the gossiping citizens of Wulstan passed it from lip to lip and seemed to take a malicious delight in pulling down the pedestal upon which they had formerly elevated the Oswalds. The poor Dean's insolvency and the sad termination of his daughter's marriage brought the Oswalds down to the level of the smallest shopkeeper. Mr. Pensax and Mrs. Trigg went up in the social scale in proportion to the fall of the Oswalds. Mrs. Trigg had, in fact, given a tea party at the Deanery, not in the housekeeper's room, but in the drawing-room, where I first listened to the music of Ruth's dear voice. From that moment the glory of the Deanery departed in my imagination. The altar had been polluted. I only remembered its purity. Oh, my dear Ruth, how much you must have secretly suffered during those dark winter days!

"Has the position of Ruth occurred to you as a subject that must be immediately considered?" I asked on the evening of my first

sermon.

"It has been a source of anxiety to me for some time," said my father; "she is almost penniless, George."

"Thank Heaven!" I said, "for affording me an opportunity to show the sincerity of my love." "In what manner, George?" "I will marry her at once."

"And how will you live?" asked my father.

"Mr. Canon Molineau tells me there is a curacy vacant, which he has no doubt I can have, at Chiswick, near London."

"A curacy! what is it worth ?"

"Sixty pounds a year," I said; "but I can make something by writing or as a tutor."

"Miserable existence! Better keep a shop or sweep a crossing," exclaimed my father.

"I can paint a little, you know," I said.

Ruth can;

you could."

she would make sixty pounds in far less time than

"Ruth! My dear father, you do not think I would let her paint for money?" I said with warmth.

"Why not, George?" said my father calmly.

"Why not! In Heaven's name, father, do not ask the question!” I replied.

"You will get no living, I fear, George," said my father; "and how are you to make an income sufficient to give to a Dean's daughter comforts equal to what she will have a right to expect? I can only give you a thousand pounds."

"A thousand pounds!" I exclaimed. "My dear father, I had no idea you were worth so large a sum; but I could not think of taking it from you."

"How, then, will you furnish that house on the Thames which is the object of your ambition? A thousand pounds will soon disappear, George. But I am not thinking of the present only: there is the future, my boy, when I am gone, and you are the father of children."

A picture of my own fireside, with Ruth's children climbing my knee, leaped into my imagination, and dried up the tear that struggled for a moment in my eye at the thought of my father's empty chair.

"Oh, I do not fear the future," I said warmly. "I do not fear the future, father, and you must not talk of a world in which you are no more. I cannot bear it. Let us live in the present; the future

will take care of itself."

"The danger of being too much in love lies in becoming selfish. Take care, George, that you consider Ruth's happiness, and not only your own. Nay, do not think me unkind. I love both of you too much for that; but I sometimes wish, George, that you had not been educated for the Church. A man who marries a Dean's daughter ought to be in a fair way for promotion; but your case is a sadly exceptional one. We must do the best we can, George. Give me your hand. May God bless and preserve you, and give you happiness and peace."

My father was much affected. He walked about the room for nearly an hour afterwards, as was often his wont when his mind was