uffering, and death, with a
stricken, bleeding, and yet self-devoting heart, for pure love of the
wretched race to which He could stoop from His glory. Yes, this Christ
could be his Redeemer too. The Almighty Lord had become his perfect and
most loving friend, his glorious, but lenient and tender brother, to whom
he could gladly give his whole heart, who understood everything, who was
ready to forgive everything--even all that was seething in his aching
heart which longed for purification--and all because He once had suffered
as a man suffers.

For the first time he, the Jacobite, dared to confess so much to himself;
and not solely for Paula's sake. A violent clanging on a cracked metal
plate roused him from his meditations by its harsh clamor; the sacrament
of the Last Supper was about to be administered: the invariable
conclusion of the Jacobite service. The bishop came forth from behind the
screen of the inner sanctuary, poured some wine into a silver cup and
crumbled into it two little cakes stamped with the Coptic cross. Of this
mixture he first partook, and then gave it in a spoon to each member of
the congregation who came up to receive it. Orion approached after two
elders of the Church. Finally the priest rinsed out the cup, and drained
the very washings, that no drop of the saving liquid should be lost.

How high had Orion's heart throbbed when, as a youth, he had been
admitted for the first time to this most sacred of all Christian
privileges! He was instructed in its deep and glorious symbolism, and had
often felt the purifying, saving, and refreshing effect of the sacrament,
strengthening him in all goodness, when he had partaken of it with his
parents and brothers. Hand-in-hand, they had gone home feeling as if
newly robed in body and soul and more closely bound together than before.
And to-day, insensible as he was to the repulsiveness of the forms of
worship of his confession he felt as though the bread and wine--the Flesh
and Blood of the Saviour--had sealed the bond he had silently entered
into with himself; as though the Lord had put forth an invisible hand to
remove the guilt and the curse that crushed him so sorely. Deep devotion
fell on his soul: his future life, he thought, should bring him nearer to
God than ever before, and be spent in loving, and in the more earnest,
full, and laborious exercise of the gifts Heaven had bestowed on him.

CHAPTER III.

Orion had dreaded the drive home wi