ple of dishes
of vegetables; then a small custard pudding, and some cheese cut up in
very minute pieces in a glass dish, some raw garden-stuff which Doddery
called salad, and three of last year's pears in an old Derby
dessert-dish. The dinner could hardly have been smaller, but it was
eminently genteel.

The conversation was entirely between Captain Winstanley and his aunt.
Vixen sat and listened wonderingly, save at odd times, when her
thoughts strayed back to the old life which she had done with for ever.

"You still continue your literary labours, I suppose, aunt," said the
Captain.

"They are the chief object of my existence. When I abandon them I shall
have done with life," replied Miss Skipwith gravely.

"But you have not yet published your book."

"No; I hope when I do that even you will hear of it."

"I have no doubt it will make a sensation."

"If it does not I have lived and laboured in vain. But my book may make
a sensation, and yet fall far short of the result which I have toiled
and hoped for."

"And that is----"

"The establishment of a universal religion."

"That is a large idea!"

"Would a small idea be worth the devotion of a life? For thirty years I
have devoted myself to this one scheme. I have striven to focus all the
creeds of mankind in one brilliant centre--eliminating all that is base
and superstitious in each several religion, crystallising all that is
good and true. The Buddhist, the Brahmin, the Mohamedan, the
Sun-worshipper, the Romanist, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, the
Wesleyan, the Swedenborgian--each and all will find the best and
noblest characteristics of his faith resolved and concentred in my
universal religion. Here all creeds will meet. Gentler and wiser than
the theology of Buddha; more humanitarian than the laws of Brahma; more
temperate than the Moslem's code of morality; with a wider grasp of
power than the Romanist's authoritative Church; severely self-denying
as Calvin's ascetic rule; simple and pious as Wesley's scheme of man's
redemption; spiritual as Swedenborg's vast idea of heaven;--my faith
will open its arms wide enough to embrace all. There need be no more
dissent. The mighty circle of my free church will enclose all creeds
and all divisions of man, and spread from the northern hemisphere to
the southern seas. Heathenism shall perish before it. The limited view
of Christianity which missionaries have hitherto offered to the heathen
may fail; but my unive