h we belong; and what a grievous blow would such an act
of apostasy give her! You owe it to the church of which you are a
member and a minister, to bear with this affliction, however severe it
may be: you owe it to my father, who instituted you, to support his
rights: you owe it to those who preceded you to assert the legality
of their position; you owe it to those who are to come after you, to
maintain uninjured for them that which you received uninjured from
others; and you owe to us all the unflinching assistance of perfect
brotherhood in this matter, so that upholding one another we may
support our great cause without blushing and without disgrace."

And so the archdeacon ceased, and stood self-satisfied, watching the
effect of his spoken wisdom.

The warden felt himself, to a certain extent, stifled; he would have
given the world to get himself out into the open air without speaking
to, or noticing those who were in the room with him; but this was
impossible. He could not leave without saying something, and he felt
himself confounded by the archdeacon's eloquence. There was a heavy,
unfeeling, unanswerable truth in what he had said; there was so much
practical, but odious common sense in it, that he neither knew how
to assent or to differ. If it were necessary for him to suffer, he
felt that he could endure without complaint and without cowardice,
providing that he was self-satisfied of the justice of his own cause.
What he could not endure was, that he should be accused by others, and
not acquitted by himself. Doubting, as he had begun to doubt, the
justice of his own position in the hospital, he knew that his own
self-confidence would not be restored because Mr Bold had been in
error as to some legal form; nor could he be satisfied to escape,
because, through some legal fiction, he who received the greatest
benefit from the hospital might be considered only as one of its
servants.

The archdeacon's speech had silenced him,--stupefied him,--annihilated
him; anything but satisfied him. With the bishop it fared not much
better. He did not discern clearly how things were, but he saw enough
to know that a battle was to be prepared for; a battle that would
destroy his few remaining comforts, and bring him with sorrow to the
grave.

The warden still sat, and still looked at the archdeacon, till his
thoughts fixed themselves wholly on the means of escape from his
present position, and he felt like a bird fasc