ng ambition must be in a man like him.
God knows I would have worked, begged, starved, rather than he should
be thus tried. I told him so the day before his ordination; but he
entreated me to be silent, with a look such as I never saw on his face
before--such as I trust in God I never may see again. I heard him all
night walking about his room; and the next morning he was gone ere I
rose. When he came back, he seemed quite excited with joy, embraced me,
told me I should never know poverty more, for that he was in priest's
orders, and we should go the next week to the curacy at Harbury."

"And he has never repented?"

"I think not. He is not without the honours he desired; for his fame in
science is extending far beyond his small parish. He fulfils his duties
scrupulously; and the people respect him, though he sides with no party,
high-church or evangelical We abhor illiberality--my son and I."

"That is clear, otherwise I had never seen Alison Balfour quitting the
kirk for the church."

"Angus Rothesay," said Mrs. Gwynne, with dignity, "I have learned,
throughout a long life, the lesson that trifling outward differences
matter little--the spirit of religion is its true life. This lesson
I have taught my son from his cradle; and where will you find a more
sincere, moral, or pious man than Harold Gwynne?"

"Where, indeed, mother?" echoed a voice, as Harold, opening the door,
caught her last words. "But come, no more o' that, an thou lovest me!"

"Harold!"

CHAPTER XVI.

Captain Rothesay found himself at breakfast on the sixth morning of his
stay at Harbury--so swiftly had the time flown. But he felt a purer and
a happier man every hour that he spent with his ancient friend.

The breakfast-room was Harold's study. It was more that of a man of
science and learning than that of a clergyman. Beside Leighton and
Flavel were placed Bacon and Descartes; dust lay upon John Newton's
Sermons, while close by, rested in honoured, well-thumbed tatters, his
great namesake, who read God's scriptures in the stars. In one corner by
a large, unopened packet--marked "Religious Society's Tracts;" it
served as a stand for a large telescope, whose clumsiness betrayed the
ingenuity of home manufacture. The theological contents of the library
was a vast mass of polemical literature, orthodox and heterodox,
including all faiths, all variations of sect. Mahomet and Swedenborg,
Calvin and the Talmud, lay side by side; and on the far