y.

"You are a more exalted creature than I could ever be," he said. "I am a
poor thing by comparison; but life struck the wrong note for you. It was
too harsh. You have lived among the hideous cruelties of old doctrines
until they have wrought evil in your brain."

He stood up and threw out his arms with an involuntary gesture, as if he
were flinging off chains.

"Ah, they are not true! They are not true!" he exclaimed. "They belong to
the dark ages. They are relics of the days when the upholders of one
religion believed that they saved souls by the stake and the rack and
thumbscrew. There were men and women who did believe it with rigid
honesty. There were men and women who, believing in other forms, died in
torture for their belief. There _is_ no God Who would ask such demoniac
sacrifice. We have come to clearer days. Somewhere--somewhere there is
light."

"You were born with the temperament to see its far-off glimmer even in
your darkest hour," Latimer said. "It is for such as you to point it out
to such as I am. Show it to me--show it to me every moment if you can!"

Baird put his hand on the man's shoulder again.

"The world is surging away from it--the chained mind, the cruelty, the
groping in the dark," he said, "as it surged away from the revengeful
Israelitish creed of 'eye for eye and tooth for tooth' when Christ came.
It has taken centuries to reach, even thus far; but, as each century
passed, each human creature who yearned over and suffered with his fellow
has been creeping on dragging, bleeding knees towards the light. But the
century will never come which will surge away from the Man who died in
man's agony for men. In thought of Him one may use reason and needs no
faith."

The germ of one of the most moving and frequently quoted of Baird's
much-discussed discourses sprang--he told his friends afterwards--from
one such conversation, and was the outcome of speech of the dead girl
Margery. On a black and wet December day he came into his study, on his
return from some parish visits, to find Latimer sitting before the fire,
staring miserably at something he held in his hand. It was a little
daguerrotype of Margery at fifteen.

"I found it in an old desk of mine," he said, holding it out to Baird,
who took it and slightly turned away to lean against the mantel, as he
examined it.

The child's large eyes seemed to light up the ugly shadows of the
old-fashioned mushroom hat she wore, the soft bow of