away in it.

"Wasn't he nice with me? wasn't he, now?" the old lady kept saying, and
John being silent--"Tut! you young men are just puir loblollyboys with a
leddy when the auld ones come."

Going to Soho that day John Storm felt a sudden thrill at seeing on the
street in front of him, walking in the same direction, an elderly figure
in cassock and cord. It was the Father Superior of the Brotherhood. John
overtook him and greeted him.

"Ah, I was on my way to see you, my son."

"Then you have heard what has happened?"

"Yes, Satan's shafts fly fast." Then taking John's arm as they walked,
"Earthly blows are but reminders of Him, my son, like the hair shirt of
the monk, and this trouble of yours is God's reminder of your broken
obedience. What did I tell you when you left us--that you would come back
within a year? And you will! Leave the world, my son. It treats you
badly. The human spirit reigns over it, and even the Church is a
Christian society out of the sphere and guidance of the Divine Spirit.
Leave it and return to your unfinished vows."

John shook his head and took the Father into the clergy-house, where the
girls were gathering for the evening. "How can I leave the world, Father,
when there's work like this to do? Society presents to a large proportion
of these bright creatures the alternative, 'Sell yourself or starve.' But
God says, 'Live, work, and love.' Therefore society is doomed, and that
dead man's sepulchre, the Establishment, is doomed, but the Church will
live, and become the corner-stone of the new order, and stand between
woman and the world, as it stood of old between the poor and the rich."

The Father preached for John that night, taking for his text "The flesh
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." And on
parting from him at the door of the sacristy he said: "Religious work can
only be good, my son, if it concerns itself first of all with the
salvation of souls. Now what if it pleased God to remove you from all
this--to call you to a work of intercession--say, to the mission field?"

John's face turned pale. "There can be no need to fly," he said, with a
frightened look. "Surely London is a mission field wide enough for any
man."

"Yet who knows? Perhaps for your own soul's sake, lest vanity should take
hold of you, or the love of fame, or--or any of the snares of Satan! But
good-bye, and God be with you!"

When John Storm reached home he found a letter await